Absolute Power
by Elysium-fic
Summary: DARKFIC. An exploration of King Alistair, married to Anora with Loghain redeemed.  Who would he become, and how would that affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances? MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH and other disturbing themes. Read Warnings. COMPLETE.
1. Part 1: Absolute Power

_**CONTENT WARNING:**_

_This fic is **DARKFIC.** It explores the characters as they might behave when they are taken to a VERY DARK PLACE. Namely, it explores who Alistair might become married to Anora with Loghain redeemed, and how that would affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances._

_It depicts acts of __ alcoholism, substance abuse, __RAPE, coerced sex, prostitution, and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Content may be triggering and/or offensive to your sensibilities. If any or all of these themes disturbs you, please hit the back button on your browser now._

* * *

Five years, the king thought, throwing back a shot of whiskey before making his way to his wife's chamber. Five years since the Blight. Five years of being married to that shrewish termagant, Anora. Five years since Loghain went from being a traitor to a hero with a single thrust of a sword into the archdemon's skull.

Five years of steady decline, drinking himself ever more deeply into oblivion. He'd become the laughing stock of Ferelden. An incompetent king, outshone in every way by his very able queen. A wastrel and a drunkard, likely to humiliate himself at state functions with his baseborn Chantry boy's graces and excessive fondness for spirits. He'd have a reputation for wenching by now, too, if Anora hadn't intervened and ordered his guards not to escort him to any more brothels.

"Get yourself a case of the pox after you've done your duty and made an heir," she sniffed disdainfully, lying on her back in her bed. Her shift was still down and her thighs tightly clamped together. She wouldn't pull the shift up to her hips or open her thighs until the last instant. Impatience was etched on her features as she waited for him to to fumble with the ties of his dressing gown, his drunken fingers clumsy. "Once you've done that, do as you like. It won't matter, because once there's an heir, you'll not touch me again. I want no part of whatever you catch."

Humiliated, he swallowed his bile and forced himself to lay on top of her and thrust until he was spent, squeezing his eyes tightly shut to block out her lovely and loathsome face. Then he donned his dressing gown again while she pointedly ignored him, and left for his own chamber and the whiskey waiting there for him.

* * *

Five years.

Five years since he'd been betrayed by the woman he loved.

That was where it had all gone wrong, he thought, gazing at Solona Amell across his desk. The Landsmeet, where she had discarded everything he thought mattered to the two of them to recruit the man responsible for Duncan's death. Now here she was again, in Denerim to attend another Landsmeet, in her capacity as the Arlessa of Amaranthine. But she'd made time to request a private audience with him, and his secretary had arranged it without consulting Alistair.

The whiskey in his tumbler burned a fiery path to his stomach as he glared at her.

"I'm worried about you, Alistair," she murmured, studying him closely. Thanks to his excellent cadre of servants, he was always bathed, barbered, and dressed in clean, well-tailored clothing. But that did not disguise his deep-set, red-rimmed eyes or the heavy stench of spirits that always clung to him. Nor did it prevent the awkward stumbles and _faux pas_ he regularly committed.

"Your concern comes a bit late, Warden-Commander," he jeered. "I'm exactly where you wanted me to be, doing exactly what you wanted me to do."

"You're better than this."

"YOU KNOW _NOTHING_ OF WHAT I AM!" he shouted. He didn't know he intended to throw the glass until it narrowly missed her head and shattered on the stone wall behind her. She cried out as a flying shard cut her cheek, bringing beads of dark blood welling to the surface. They leapt to their feet in unison, Alistair charging her, and Solona readying a spell to defend herself.

She didn't remain on her feet for long. The force with which he smote her sent her to the floor, flattening her and driving the breath from her chest. She was still struggling to catch her breath when he reached her, pinning her down with the weight of his body. He caught her wrists and forced them to the floor beside her head.

"Isn't this what you like?" he rasped, the past and the present overlapping for a moment.

_"Force me." Solona pitched her voice low so it wouldn't carry beyond the tent. Not that it mattered; they'd be heard sooner or later, anyway._

_"What?"_

_"Just for fun," she said with an eager nod. "Pin me down and just _take_ me, as though I were unwilling. I'll struggle and protest a little, but don't stop. Do it."_

Somehow he got her robes up to her waist, though she clawed and hit at him with her fists, her mana drained. Her smallclothes he ripped away with a snarling sound as they tore. And then his fingers were plunging inside her while his other hand held her down by the throat.

She was dry and tight but, Maker, every bit as hot as he remembered.

"Is this what it was like with Zevran, after I was gone?" he growled, ramming his fingers in deeper. She struggled and cried out, tears of pain and fear springing to her large, brown eyes. Those tears gave him a malicious satisfaction. Did she know how many he had shed in private after she betrayed him? "Did he play all those dirty games you used to like to teach me?"

"_Please_, Alistair...!"

Another thrust of his fingers, and it was becoming easier, her body growing wet despite her protests. He thumb found that small spot she'd showed him, the one that made her writhe and scream. She gasped, her body arching, her hips moving as she continued to try to get away. But he knew that response. She had taught him well, taught him what gave her pleasure. He used it against her ruthlessly, touching her just the way she liked it. Soon her sheath was slick and dripping, his hand shining with her moisture.

Alistair sent out another pulse of holy energy, draining whatever was left of her mana and stunning her. While she was stunned, he quickly unlaced his breeches and pushed down his braies. His cock... Maker, his cock hadn't been this hard in years. Some nights with Anora it took agonizing, humiliating minutes to work himself up hard enough to perform his duty on her. Now, however, it was rigid and rampant, a deep, furious shade of red, leaking and quivering with his readiness.

Without a second thought, he flung himself down on top of her. He grabbed that aching, throbbing flesh and guided it to her entrance and thrust deep, deep within.

"Is this how Loghain fucked you?" he demanded in a harsh whisper, his moist, whiskey-laden breath panting directly in her face. Solona coughed and tried to turn away, tears streaming down her face, but he grabbed her hair, wrenching a cry of pain from her, and jerked her around so that he could ravish her mouth as completely as he was taking the rest of her body. Through her robes, he seized one of her nipples and squeezed, hard. "Did he know you like to be hurt at little? Did he know you like your men to whisper vulgar things to you while they have you? Did you spread your legs for him and ask him to lick your dripping quim? Did he fuck you with his tongue, the way I used to? Did you grab his hair and ride his face while you screamed his name?"

"No!" she wept. "No, Alistair, no! Not Zevran! Not Loghain! There was only ever you. Don't ruin that. Please, for the love of the Maker, _stop this_. I don't want this."

Tears came to his own eyes, then. He kissed her, tenderly, lovingly. "I didn't want what you did to me, either," he murmured gently... and thrust harder. And harder. He hammered into her, over and over, and he knew he was hurting her, being far more rough than she had ever asked him to be when they were together. A part of him hated himself for doing it, but the part of him that had been hating himself for five years _didn't care_. On he drove, and on, while she screamed and sobbed and begged, and his tears and sweat splashed down onto her face and mingled with her own.

His fingers found that nub again, and with a few strokes, she arched beneath him and shuddered, her sheath rippling and pulsing around him. He came with a choked sob and an agonized groan, the force of his release more painful than pleasurable. It felt as though his seed burned as it spurted into her.

They lay there silently, interlocked on the floor. Solona wept softly, piteously. His cock wilted within her, and slowly his panting faded and the horror of what he had done dawned on him.

He scrambled off her sobbing body, puking violently into a corner. Wiping his mouth, he staggered to the decanter of whiskey and poured himself another glass, downing it in a single shot. He thought he might spew it back up again, but gradually his nausea faded, and with it, his self-loathing.

She had betrayed him, first.

At length, she rose, straightening her robes and flinging her useless smallclothes onto the fire. With trembling hands she tried to straighten her mussed hair, tried to repair her dignity, or at least acquire some semblance of it. It struck another chord of memory, of that day in the Landsmeet when she stared at him, stunned and hurt at his anger when she chose Loghain.

Bile surged up again, and this time he relished it. He let the rage, the hatred consume him.

"You will come here again tomorrow," he said in his best I'm-the-King voice. "Same time. My secretary will be certain I have the morning free."

Solona shook her head, tossing her frizzy, mousy brown hair. How did she manage to do that? he wondered. It had never mattered to him, that her hair was perpetually unkempt, that she was freckled and pale, that her forehead was too broad and the shape of her jaw and teeth practically horse-like. He heard the unkind whispers about her homeliness, but he'd never seen it. From the moment she'd smiled at him with those merry, dark-brown eyes, he'd thought her lovely.

He hated her a little more because of that, because even now, humbled and defeated as she was, she was still beautiful to him.

"You're mad if you think I'll ever be alone with you again," she replied, her voice shaking and choked with tears.

"You'd refuse a royal summons?" he asked, and there was something hateful in his voice. He heard it, and didn't care.

"You can't do this," she protested. "There are laws. I'm an arlessa, I have recourse—"

"You're a mage, masquerading as an arlessa," he shot back. "Go ahead. Bring a charge against me in the Landsmeet. Do you think a single one of them will support you? They may think I'm a buffoon, but there's not one who will take your word over mine."

She hung her head, tears falling upon the breast of her robes. Those beautiful breasts he'd once worshiped.

"Be here again tomorrow," he repeated his edict. "And wear the Chasind robe we once found."


	2. Part 2: Abomination

_**CONTENT WARNING:**_

_This fic is **DARKFIC.** It explores the characters as they might behave when they are taken to a VERY DARK PLACE. Namely, it explores who Alistair might become married to Anora with Loghain redeemed, and how that would affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances._

_It depicts acts of __ alcoholism, substance abuse, __RAPE, coerced sex, prostitution, and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Content may be triggering and/or offensive to your sensibilities. If any or all of these themes disturbs you, please hit the back button on your browser now._

* * *

When had he become an abomination? Alistair wondered.

He stared into his heavy crystal glass as though the amber liquid within held answers beyond mortal ken. Immediately after breakfast was actually a bit early for him to start drinking, but that was only because he usually didn't wake until nearly noon. His days had long ago devolved into an endless and pointless cycle of waking to drink away the pain of being alive and sleeping to escape the pain of his excesses.

When had it started? After that fateful Landsmeet during the Blight, of course. He'd done everything Solona had asked of him. He'd agreed to marry Anora, agreed to become King of Ferelden, despite having never wanted such a thing. It was for the best, she'd told him, and he'd believed her, even though his heart had broken knowing it meant he couldn't spend his life with her the way he'd secretly dreamed of doing.

But it had taken him a while to discover the blessed numbing properties of spirits. He hadn't sought them after Solona recruited Loghain. No, he'd spent those final weeks of the Blight in a furious rage, but ultimately clear-headed, trying his best to be the king they needed him to be. Trying to be strong.

He'd organized the evacuation of Denerim when the darkspawn horde suddenly marched east, getting as many people out as he possibly could, while Anora traveled to Redcliffe to coordinate the war with Eamon and the army Alistair and Amell had pulled together. There would have been hundreds, if not thousands, more denizens of Denerim dead if not for his efforts.

He'd tried. Untrained and completely ignorant of what he needed to be doing, he'd tried. But when the battle had been over, the only thing anyone was sure of was that Loghain, the man who had betrayed them all, the man who had left Duncan to die, had saved them all.

Loghain was a hero and Alistair... was the king who, rumor had it, hid in the palace and did nothing.

Still, he hadn't sought refuge in drink yet. He'd closeted himself with Eamon, trying to learn the art of statecraft, only to emerge and find that his input was unwanted at best, and ridiculed by his intended wife at worst. He'd attended the unveiling of the statue Anora erected to her father. He pretended not to hear the whispers of the nobles, wondering what sort of wench Maric had begotten him upon. Peasant, they speculated, or a whore? He'd heard them stifle their titters at his clumsy manners and awkward graces, blushing miserably at each fumble, at each frustrated sigh Anora heaved as she hastened to cover his missteps. There was no doubt in anyone's mind who would be running Ferelden, they whispered when they thought he wasn't near. Certainly the cloddish bastard Maric had begotten wasn't up to the task.

But then came his wedding night. Nervous, but resolutely determined to be a good husband, he'd done his best not to disgrace his bride that day. Anora had given him nothing back, not so much as a smile. And when he'd gone to her that night, she'd slapped his hand away the moment he tried to caress her face.

"Save that for the strumpet of a mage you cavort with," she snapped irritably. "You're not here to woo me. Do your duty and get out."

He'd tried once more to hold her, when his passion was spent and all he'd wanted was not to feel alone for a moment. She'd ordered him from her chambers like he mattered no more than her maidservant.

He found a flagon of wine in his own chambers when he returned to them. He'd drunk it all that night, waking in the morning with a headache and a foul taste in his mouth, but little recollection of the lonely night he had passed.

He'd found his companion.

That was when the abomination was born, the night he married his brother's widow. Abominations were created when people were possessed by demons, after all. And so he was. Not a demon from the Fade, no, but a demon nonetheless. It entered him the night he found comfort in oblivion, the night he realized he had nothing. No friends. No comrades. No purpose, or destiny, no duty beyond getting an heir and not making a nuisance of himself.

All of it was gone. Solona had taken it all away from him, that day she recruited Loghain. Everything he lived for. The more he drank, the more her fault it became. Wine gradually gave way to stronger spirits, and those spirits whispered to him as they seared their way down his gullet, an endless litany of the injustices done to him. They catalogued her betrayals until Alistair hated her almost as much as he loved her. The world and the past took on the form of that hatred, warping until the blame rolled directly toward her. Every slight, every humiliation, every mistake that made people laugh at him made its way back to roost at her stoop. With each drink, with the numbness and oblivion it brought, these fevered thoughts of betrayal and blame became Truth, until it was only in rare, isolated moments of sobriety that he vaguely remembered the truth had once been something else entirely.

Hatred consumed his soul as surely as the spirits consumed his wits, until hatred and the spirits were all that was left.

The night after he... the night after she had her audience with him, he drank himself into a stupor and awoke from horrific nightmares that had nothing to do with darkspawn. Her tears, her agonized face, the utter desolation therein would not leave his mind. Naked and reeking of whiskey, he'd collapsed to his knees on the floor of his chambers, sobbing and sick with the knowledge of what he'd done. So loud and uncontrollable were his sobs, heaving until his chest ached, that he was certain everyone in that wing of the palace heard him. No one came to see if he was all right. Not even the most intrepid servant rapped upon his door. No one would go near him until daylight, when he was sober again.

He thought of what he'd ordered her to do, thought of her returning. Doing... what he'd done, once, in a frenzy... that was one thing. But to do it again, to _intend_ it, to _plan_ for it, for Andraste's sake! That was when he knew he was an abomination. Everyone's worst suppositions about him were true, and far more horrific than anyone had ever guessed. He knew he was an abomination not because he'd commanded her to return, but because he knew if she did, he'd do it all again.

He was looking forward to it.

Those few moments, being inside her, having power over her, making her hurt as much as he'd spent all these years hurting... it had felt too good. Now that he'd had it, he would never be able to give it up. He would visit upon her every humiliation he'd ever suffered, make her experience every powerless instant he had ever known. And he would revel in it.

He found himself with his sword in his hand, his father's sword which _she_ had recovered for him at Ostagar. He'd put the point to his chest, just under his ribs. He'd put the pommel on the floor, bracing it. But his knees wouldn't buckle as he commanded them to. The instinct for self-preservation was still too strong. He couldn't make himself let his weight drop, let the force of his fall drive the sword through his heart.

So instead, he rose in time for breakfast, and had the servants bathe, shave and dress him.

When she arrived, he'd be armed with the amber liquid that had been his only friend and companion all these years.

The abomination would be waiting. 

* * *

She smelled of lyrium when she arrived, and he knew she had been arming herself with magic just as he had been arming himself with liquor.

But she wore the Chasind robe as he'd commanded. Why, he wondered, had she done that, if she was so set on resisting?

"Go on, then," he said with a cruel smirk. "Attack me."

Lightning sizzled around her fingertips. "You think I won't?" she asked tightly. "Do you imagine I'll just let you rape me again?"

It was a testament to the amount he'd drunk already that he didn't even wince at her word choice.

"Let me tell you what you're going to do," he said, licking his parched lips and eying the half-empty decanter. "When I've had my pleasure and let you leave here, you're going to return to Vigil's Keep and hand over the mantle of Warden-Commander to one of your other Wardens. Then you will return to Denerim where you'll take a modest townhouse within easy distance of the palace. You're going to give up everything you've worked for... to be my mistress."

"Why in the name of Andraste would I do that?" Solona demanded, aghast.

"Are you aware that I intervened on Jowan's behalf?" Alistair asked, giving in and pouring himself another drink. "When Eamon sent him back to the Circle to face justice, I spoke for him, and as a result, he wasn't made Tranquil."

"I was aware of that," she answered, nodding. "And I was grateful, of course. But you weren't speaking to me at the time, so I never got a chance to tell you..."

"That will change." Solona blinked at him in confusion. Alistair felt a surge of arousal, his cock stiffening as he tested his newfound power. "If you don't do precisely what I've ordered you to do, I'll send a royal missive to Knight-Commander Greagoir. It will say that you confided in me that you discovered Jowan has once again been practicing blood magic. It will describe how you couldn't bear to come forward yourself, and swore me to secrecy, but that I, as King and a former templar, felt duty bound to make the truth known. I have it written already, right here in my desk. All I have to do is summon my courier to deliver it."

Tears welled in her eyes, pouring down her freckled cheeks in a rapid torrent. "Alistair. Please. _Why?_"

"You took everything I cared about from me, once. Why shouldn't I take everything from you?"

His stomach clenched, churning nauseously, but he did not relent. His fingertips were numb from the whiskey, his head buzzing pleasantly. And his body... his body was surging with power, with life. Having her with him, having her at his mercy... it was going to make all the rest of it worth it.

This feeling was worth destroying her for, even as it destroyed himself.

Finally, she nodded, her hair falling around her face as she bowed her head. But he wasn't finished.

"Should you decide Jowan's fate doesn't matter to you, you should also be aware that I am prepared to withdraw royal favor from the Grey Wardens of Amaranthine," he continued coldly. "You've served Anora's purposes already. She couldn't care less what happens to you now and has left it up to me. The Chantry has been itching to have a go at you, seeing as how you've conscripted several apostates. And the nobility would love nothing better than to eject you from the Landsmeet for crimes both real and imagined, and reclaim the arling for a true noble."

Her fair skin grew even more pallid, so that her freckles stood out in stark relief. "You'd punish the Wardens to make me suffer?" Again, he felt that sickening, delirious, heady surge of power. When Duncan had recruited her, she hadn't really cared about being a Warden. But somewhere along the line, in the year they had struggled against the Blight, that had changed. It _mattered_ to her, what he was demanding she give up.

"I'd light Andraste's pyre myself to make you suffer," he said cruelly, and believed it. Even as he loathed himself for it, he knew it was true. The ability to make her suffer was all he had left in the world, the only thing that was still his.

He felt the buildup of her magic a split second before she released it. His entire body burned as lightning drove through him. He convulsed helplessly in its grasp. But then it was over, and he caught his breath before she could invoke another spell. His smite sent her flying across the room. It drove her against the edge of a heavy wooden table, and she cried out in pain and sank to the floor.

Alistair bared his teeth in something far too savage to be called a grin. It was a mockery of the smiles he used to share with her. "Perhaps I should mention that there are also certain damning documents that will be found should I happen to meet my death by any sort of magical misadventure. Documents implicating various mages in the practice of blood magic, accusing the Grey Wardens of sedition. That sort of thing."

Tossing back the last of his whiskey, he set down his glass and strode across the room to her where she huddled upon the floor, bruised and drained of mana. Never, in all the time they'd spent training together, had she been able to wear him down with magic before he could get a smite off. Not unless she was prepared to actually use a spell that would kill him. All she'd succeeded in doing was making this worse for herself.

He could have thanked her for it. It took him out of that cold, distant, calculating place where he could hear the distant shrieking of the conscience he'd once possessed. It brought him back to the roaring of his rage, to his need to tear at her, drive into her.

He looked down at her, his breath slashing between his teeth with the savagery of his lust. She was wearing the Chasind robe, the robe that had driven him to distraction in those early months of the Blight. The pale skin of her thigh practically glowed as it spanned the distance between the top of her stocking and her hip. Below the furred mantle the inner swells of her breasts heaved with fear and pain. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shining with tears. Wisps of wavy hair had escaped the simple queue she pulled it back with to cling to the tears upon her cheeks.

That was why everyone called her homely, he thought, towering over her, staring down at his prize as he rubbed his hand over the bulge in his breeches, savoring the moment, the power. She'd never worn these robes before the nobles. Instead, she wore more modest robes, like the Circle mages wore. No one else ever saw her the way Alistair had seen her those early months of the Blight, dressed like a savage, her ample bosom half-bare and her backside peeking out with each step. They'd never seen her glowing with power, never seen the hectic color on her cheeks or the fire of battle-lust in her eyes.

They saw the academic mage, the bookworm, untidy and socially awkward. They'd never seen her looking like some barbarian goddess in all her uncivilized glory.

That memory was his and his alone.

She'd worn these robes the first day they made love. Did she remember that? Did she remember how, flushed in the aftermath of battle against a gang of bandits, they'd rushed off into the trees together and torn into one another. How she hadn't even bothered to undress, but had just lifted the flap covering her loins to guide him into her. How Alistair's inexperience and uncertainty had been lost in the residual heat of battle, leaving him open to be guided by her and able to learn how to give her pleasure without being crippled by self-consciousness.

She's worn them then, and she'd wear them now. For him. Only ever for him.

He'd worshiped her, then. Now he'd make her worship him.

"Kiss my feet," he commanded, rubbing his erection harder through the heavy satin of his breeches. If he wasn't careful he was going to spill in his pants, but it felt too good to stop. "Kiss my feet and apologize to me."

Solona looked startled, and then rebellious. "Apologize to _you_...!" she began hotly, and he bent low and grabbed her by her hair, hauling her up to her knees as she cried out in pain.

"Yes!" he screamed in her face. "_To me!_ Apologize for betraying me! Apologize for..." Emotion welled up in his throat for a moment, choking him. With a growl, he began to shake her by the hair near the nape of her neck, like a misbehaving dog by the scruff. He shook her until rage flowed again, drowning sorrow.

"Apologize for leaving me alone here," he finished harshly, releasing her with a thrust that sent her sprawling back to the floor.

She began to weep; soft, whimpering sobs keening up from her throat. But she crawled to him, her head hanging low to the floor as she shuffled on her hands and knees.

"I'm sorry," he barely heard her whisper as her lips touched his boots. First one, then the other. "Alistair, I'm so very sorry!"

Again, some emotion other than rage and hatred tried to rise to the surface, but he pushed it back and used his foot to thrust her away.

Down, he sank. To the floor, where he grabbed her ankles and jerked her legs apart. He buried his face between her thighs and the scent of her overwhelmed him. Maker, he'd nearly forgotten just how marvelous she smelled. He nuzzled the smallclothes covering her sex and as he did so, they began to grow damp and the smell intensified.

She wanted him. Even now, she wanted him. He thought of her words from the previous day, that there had been no-one else. Were they true? All these years, he'd imagined her with a chain of lovers parading through Vigil's Keep. That Howe fellow she'd conscripted, perhaps. Or the apostate mage. In his drunker moments, he'd even imagined her with Oghren, making bronto jokes as he rode her. But what if there hadn't been? Had she spent these years as starved for touch as he had?

He licked that growing patch of moisture on the linen cloth. Even with his senses dulled by whiskey, she tasted like the very grace of Andraste Herself.

She wanted him, and he would make her suffer for it.

He stripped away her smallclothes and used his lips, his tongue, plying her ruthlessly, until Solona squirmed and writhed and begged him for more. He used upon her the things she had taught him and even the tricks he'd picked up in the brothels, before Anora deprived him of that outlet. He thrust his thumb into her tight, wet sheath and his finger into her backside and fucked her with them in unison, hard and fast. Onward, he drove her, to the very brink, until her resistance was gone and she was begging incoherently for her release.

And then he stopped. He withdrew his fingers, wiped her slick from his face as though it were something foul. She was still blinking up at him, her dark eyes dazed and uncomprehending, when he straddled her waist and pushed the bodice of her robes down, freeing her magnificent breasts. He released his cock, hard and aching, from his breeches, but when she reached for it, he slapped her hands away.

"Do as I've commanded," he said harshly, "and maybe when you get back, I'll finish what I started here today."

Horror and shame dawned in her eyes as he spat into the deep valley of her cleavage and pushed her breasts together, thrusting between them.

"Get off me!" she snarled, but he ignored her, driving himself between those soft mounds. He pinched her nipples, watching them blanch as she cried out in pain, as she struggled beneath his weight. He felt her magic well up, and then subside. She recalled what he'd said about the things that could happen if she killed him.

He felt his release building, and oh Maker, it was better than anything he'd felt in years. Nothing like the agonized effort of finding pleasure with Anora. Nothing like the shameful rush he'd found in the brothels. It was dark and bright, glorious and filled with burning rage. He chased it, let it well up and spill over him, his seed jetting in pearly strands upon her breasts as she glared up at him in hatred.

"Lick it," he ordered, pushing her generous breast up toward her face. How he'd once loved to watch her suck her own nipples while he pleasured her! She winced, squeezing her eyes shut in shame. But she took her breast in-hand and bent her neck, tracing a string of his seed with her tongue and cleaning it off her skin.

Rising, he tucked his softened cock back into his breeches, ignoring her as she tried to make herself presentable.

"Will that be all, _Your Majesty?_" he heard her ask finally, and the sarcasm in her voice would have sliced a fatal wound, had it been a blade.

"It will," he said with a calm he didn't feel. Then he turned and approached her. He reached out to touch her face and she jerked away, glaring at him again. Undaunted, he took her chin in his hand, his fingers digging into the sides of her jaw, and forced a kiss upon her.

"I may not have the Wardens. I may not have a duty. I may not have a real marriage, or an heir, or a country that respects me. But I will have _you._"

Two more tears fell from her eyes.

"You've become a monster," she whispered.

"I've become what you made me when you left me here."

She turned and left. 

* * *

He stayed there in his study, drinking slowly throughout the day. For once, he didn't feel the need to rush headlong into oblivion. He wanted to linger there, only half-numb, and savor his victory. What he had become was an abomination, yes. But at least he wouldn't be alone anymore.

Anora found him as afternoon wore into evening.

"My midwives say the timing is auspicious," she announced coldly, without preamble. "You will lie with me tonight."

"No."

"I beg your pardon?"

Alistair rose from his chair, withdrawing his flaccid cock from the breeches he had never bothered to re-lace after his meeting with Solona that morning.

Anora stared at him, her beautiful, hateful face alarmed.

Smirking, he began to urinate on her skirts.

"That's the last offering you'll get from my cock," Alistair said, and turned away as she fled.


	3. Part 3: Isolation

_**CONTENT WARNING:**_

_This fic is **DARKFIC.** It explores the characters as they might behave when they are taken to a VERY DARK PLACE. Namely, it explores who Alistair might become married to Anora with Loghain redeemed, and how that would affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances._

_It depicts acts of __ alcoholism, substance abuse, __RAPE, coerced sex, prostitution, and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Content may be triggering and/or offensive to your sensibilities. If any or all of these themes disturbs you, please hit the back button on your browser now._

* * *

"My lady? You have a visitor."

Solona blinked at her butler as though he'd unexpectedly begun to speak the Tevinter tongue.

"A visitor. For me? Here?"

"And why should this surprise you?" an all too familiar voice asked. "If you will not write to your old friends, _Guardiana_, then they must seek you out, yes?"

"Zevran!" For an instant, one swift, shining flare of hope. And then...

"You must leave." 

* * *

It was as though Alistair were many different men, now.

_"Hold me."_

"Oh, Maker." She winced. His voice was heavily slurred; tonight would not be one of those nights when he was nearly himself. "Your majesty, please. Let's just... get you to bed and you can rest. You'll feel better tomorrow." It was a lie, but it was all she knew to say that would get them through the night.

Those were the nights when he was so far gone, nothing was left but self-pity. Sometimes he could even admit his sins, amidst guilt-wracked sobs. He could admit what a wreck his life had become, how horrible he'd been to her. Those were the times she blamed herself as well, for the role she had played in creating this situation.

It was easy to remember she wasn't to blame when he was angry and raving, making her feel defensive. But his tears were her undoing. She would say anything, do anything, to comfort him. She'd lost count of the times she'd extracted fervent promises that he would change, that he would do better, stop drinking so much, stop wallowing. But it never lasted. The next time he came to her, he'd be drunk again, with an excuse ready on his lips, how it was because of something Anora had done, or something that had happened with this nobleman or that.

Nothing was ever his fault.

Sometimes he was practically a lost and hurt child and all she had to do was coddle him, pour him into her bed and let him sleep it off. More than anything, he seemed to want someone to touch him with kindness and tell him he wasn't alone, wasn't unwanted.

"Please, Solona. You don't know what it's like." Tears shone in his red-rimmed eyes, his expression somewhere between confused and desolate. "You don't know how it is there. I have no one. I'm all alone. This... you... this is all I have."

"I do know," she murmured, as he leaned on her and began to weep softly. "I swear to you, I know."

She did.

It was nearly two years now she'd been in Denerim, ensconced at court as his mistress. Two years since Alistair had blackmailed her into giving up everything she'd worked to accomplish. It wasn't entirely awful, all the time. She was free from all the crushing duties and responsibilities she'd shouldered since the Blight. She had whole days now to devote to no other occupation than her one true passion: learning.

She had a modest townhouse just outside the palace district, comfortable and quaint, paid for with the pension she and Nathaniel Howe had negotiated when she "retired" as Commander of the Grey and left Vigil's Keep. Each week she filled it a little more with books and scrolls. She'd brought wagons full of them from the Vigil, and kept adding to the collection.

Not just scrolls and tomes about magic, either. History. Art. Politics. Archeology, even. Ever since the Blight, trudging through the Deep Roads and the elven ruins in the Brecilian Forest, she'd been fascinated by old, lost places. Before she'd been tapped on the shoulder to take command of the Grey Wardens at Vigil's Keep, she had imagined she might leave Ferelden and go to study them. Now, however, all she had were her books.

That was the not-so-bad part of the "arrangement" (and really, it could only be called so by the most optimistic stretch of an eagerly charitable mind) Alistair had proposed. The other part involved waiting, and that was agony. Worse than anything that happened between she and Alistair was the fact that she never knew when he would come to her, or what state he would be in when he arrived.

She kept a small staff of competent and discreet servants, brought with her from the Vigil because she knew she had their loyalty. Early on, she impressed upon them that anything that passed within the walls of her home with the king was to be regarded as a state secret, and spreading tales tantamount to high treason. It didn't stop court gossip, of course, but it did prevent the gossip from taking on any hint of truth.

Only recently had she begun to realize, that was worse.

"I know," she whispered again, stroking his face while he began to grow heavy where he leaned upon her as his limbs relaxed in sleep, and ignored the tears that came to her own eyes. 

* * *

"Were you aware, my Warden, that your lady's maid is the sister of the head groom at Vigil's Keep?" Zevran asked as her butler brought them tea. He would have to leave, certainly, but she'd indulge in his company for a few moments.

Something icy took root in her chest.

"My staff doesn't talk," she said, wishing she sounded more certain.

"No, you are absolutely correct in that," Zevran agreed, sipping his tea and choosing a pastry. "They are the very souls of discretion. Noble families have spent fortunes and not managed to find servants half so trustworthy."

"Then why are you here?" Solona asked guardedly.

"It is what they do not say that is so very troubling," the assassin answered thoughtfully. "Two years, and your maid barely mentions her mistress to her family back home? Nor does your housekeeper, who is the daughter of the head cook at the Vigil. In fact, no one back in Amaranthine seems to have any idea what it is you've been doing here in Denerim these past two years. So the head groom and the cook, they make mention of this odd lack of information to the seneschal, who often wonders about you, also."

"Varel."

Zevran nodded. "Just so. And he mentions the matter to the new arl, who has not heard from you either. But he has heard rumors, circulated amongst the nobility, and he grows more concerned with each one."

Solona bowed her head in resignation, knowing the rumors to which Zevran referred. No one knew that she was a virtual prisoner. They all thought she had come to Denerim willingly to be by Alistair's side. And now rumors were circulating that the king's erratic behavior weren't due to a fondness for spirits at all, but to something _the mage_ had done to him. After all, how else could a horse-faced bluestocking like Solona Amell keep the handsome king coming back to her, again and again?

That hurt worse than anything Alistair did in his drunkenness. More than the roughness, more than lying with him whether she willed it or not, more than his fits of melancholy or his spite and tirades, it hurt. She could accept some of the blame he heaped upon her, because she knew there was a kernel of truth at the bottom of it all. She was not entirely guiltless in the matter of his downfall. But to be accused of using magic, possibly even blood magic, to ensorcel the king when she had done nothing of the sort? That galled.

"And so, when one of your very old companions comes to visit all the way from Antiva, they are able to give him no word of you, save that you are here." Zevran gave a dismayed hiss. "And here you are, indeed. But why?" 

* * *

Moist lips on her neck, an eager hand freeing her breast from her bodice.

"You want me."

Another hand, between her thighs, where she was growing wet in spite of herself. Even after all he had done, sometimes she _did_ still want him, if only to be reminded of what it felt like to be wanted at all.

"_Please_, Alistair."

She was ashamed. Ashamed of being the one to blame. Ashamed of not intervening years earlier, before his decline reached its nadir. She'd seen him periodically throughout those five years; how could she not, at the Landsmeet and various noble functions. Surely she could have done something!

She was ashamed of not knowing how to stop him now that he had become a disaster. Ashamed for still loving him, despite everything. Ashamed that sometimes—not all the time, but sometimes—he could still give her pleasure, despite her misery.

It didn't happen as frequently these days as it had when she first came back to Denerim to be his mistress. Then, he'd used her pleasure like a weapon against her. He used it to taunt her, to lord over her how very well he knew her and her responses, to gloat about how she still wanted him.

Those early times had been the worst, full of rage and hate and degradation. But it hadn't remained that way. The longer she was in Denerim, the more often he seemed to forget that he was angry with her. In some ways, it became like she was his mistress in truth, rather than an unwilling concubine. Alistair began coming to her when he wasn't angry. It appeared he came to her because he simply didn't have anywhere else where he was needed, or wanted.

And that, she came to understand, was true. Despite his declaration that he wouldn't let Anora override him and run the country without his input, that was precisely what had happened. He hadn't the defenses to stand against Anora's disdain when he'd tried to put himself forward. So he'd done precisely what he'd always done, since his earliest childhood, whenever he felt rejected; he'd retreated and sulked, hurt and confused and more certain than ever that no one wanted him and no one would ever want him.

She hadn't understood the devastation her choice to marry him to Anora would wreak.

She understood now.

There was never a time when he wasn't drinking. But sometimes he wasn't _quite_ so drunk when he came to her. Those times, he was almost himself again. Just Alistair, only... slightly more ridiculous. His once-charming silliness was now a drunken jester's foolery, loud and sloppy. But even then, he was unpredictable, his temper more prone to sudden surges of anger. He had excuses and justifications for everything.

The Alistair she'd once known had been self-deprecating to a fault, all too eager to assume he was in the wrong, to be talked down from his opinions. This new Alistair, the king and sot, would never admit to being wrong, and was quick to become argumentative, no matter how incorrect his assertions were.

She'd been sucked down that futile path more than once, even on ridiculously trivial subjects such as what color Leliana's armor had been, or where the Magi encampment at Ostagar had been located. Any contradiction was cause for a quarrel.

These were the facts of her life. She was always wrong, and she was always to blame. He'd told himself that so many times, she wasn't sure he remembered there was any other way to look at the matter. 

* * *

If she had known how to heal him, she would have done so. But there was no spell for this, no incantation she could utter that would bring back the innocent, gentle templar who had been and drive away the rage-filled king who now was.

She'd tried, once. His guards were a lackadaisical lot. Sometimes she wondered about that, wondered if Anora was intentionally leaving the door open for assassins by not ascertaining he had better guardsmen. The men assigned to him were used to his drunkenness and resigned to the fact that, more often than not, their duties were to keep him from causing harm to himself rather than protecting him from threats. It was no great feat to get him out from under their gaze.

"Stay with me," she'd murmured one night, nuzzling him with an ardor she didn't actually feel. "Send your guards back to the palace and stay with me. Not just for tonight. Tell them you're staying... for a week. Tell them you're taking a holiday."

Flattered by her suddenly eager attention, he did as she bade. Two of his guards had remained, housed in the servant's quarters with the rest of her staff, complacent in the knowledge that nothing could harm the king so long as he dallied with his mistress, who had, after all, led Ferelden against the Blight.

Alistair awoke the next morning to find himself immobilized. Not by magic, which he could dispel, but by good old-fashioned ropes at his wrists and ankles. His head throbbed with the previous day's excesses, and his temper had been ugly when he discovered himself bound.

"This is treason!" he spat, as his skin grew pale and took on a sickly hue, and his breathing grew heavy and ragged. Perspiration poured down his face and made the bedclothes cling wetly to his body. Even his sweat smelled of spirits. "I'll have you hanged, you traitorous bitch!"

She did her best to close her ears to his threats and ranting as his imprecations grew ever more caustic. It was useless to try to explain to him that she was trying to make him better. She cleaned up the vomit when he began retching uncontrollably and wiped his face as he heaped invective upon her and even tried to bite her.

By the end of the first day, he was disoriented and prone to hearing things she hadn't said. Once he lapsed into a fitful state of unconsciousness, Solona approached his guards to tell them the king had developed a serious fever, but that she was a skilled healer and was treating it, and that they were not to worry. On the third day, they demanded entrance anyway when Alistair began howling, shrieking that the ropes were serpents trying to devour him.

"Why is he bound, mage?" one of them asked, his hand hovering over the hilt of his sword when she opened the door to admit them.

"So he doesn't injure himself, you fool!" Solona snapped. Her hair stuck out in wild wisps and tendrils about her face; she'd not bathed or gotten out of her dressing gown for three days, had barely eaten or slept. She imagined she looked very much like a witch to them. "As you can see, he's very ill. I can treat the fever, but it's going to take time."

The two guards looked uncertainly at one another, and though her manners had never been polished, she tried her best to achieve a soothing, cajoling tone. "Come now. If I were going to harm the king, I could have done so virtually at will any time he's been here. He's safe here." Desperate tears sprang to her eyes. That, she suspected, was what actually convinced them. "I swear to you, I'm doing my best to help him."

Alistair's confusion and delusions persisted for two more days beyond that, punctuated by periods of violent ranting and, most terrifying of all, convulsions so severe she feared he might choke and suffocate. Grimly, Solona healed his wrists and ankles with her magic when the ropes wore them raw. She drizzled water from a clean rag down his throat, only to have him heave it up along with a thin, foaming trickle of bile. She bathed his fevered skin when the sweat rolled off him and buried him in coverlets when he began to shiver so fiercely the bed quaked.

Nearly a week passed before he was himself again, clear-eyed and lucid. The devastation on his face as he thought about the things he had done in his drunkenness was horrific to behold. Without the numbness of spirits to cushion him from his guilt, he wanted to die. He sobbed and begged her to kill him. And then he sobbed and begged her to forgive him.

"I don't know if I can ever forgive what you've done, even though I know it wasn't really you," she said hollowly. "I'll stay, until I know you're well again. And then I need you to let me leave. That's all I ask."

"Some wine, Solona," he asked, pushing the platter of food she offered him away with a sickened grimace. Though at least some of it was the result of his ordeal, she was startled to realize just how old he looked. In the six years since the Blight, he'd aged twenty. "Please."

"You mustn't," she answered, shaking her head. "Please, Alistair. It's killing you. Please don't make this all have been for nothing. If you ever loved me, please stop."

Though his hand trembled as he brought the cup of weak tea to his lips, he nodded.

His guards sent word to the palace that all was well while he lingered two more days, regaining his strength until his appetite returned and his longing for spirits didn't seem so severe. But he had to go back to the palace, and she had to let him go.

He came staggering back three nights later, reeking of whiskey, his voice slurred and his posture defeated.

"I'm sorry, my love," he said, sinking to his knees in the middle of her sitting room. "I tried."

Tears spilled down her cheeks as she clenched her shaking hand into a fist and pressed it to her mouth to silence the sobs that wanted to escape.

"I know." 

* * *

"You must go, Zevran."

She tried to imagine what might happen if Alistair came and found Zevran here, and she couldn't, for she didn't know which Alistair it would be who came. He might be jolly and gregarious, embracing Zevran like a long-lost friend, or he might fly into a jealous rage and accuse her of all manner of depravity.

One was as horrific to contemplate as the other.

"You must tell me, what has happened here?" Zevran insisted.

Adamantly, she shook her head. "I can't."

She didn't want their former companions to know what Alistair had become. She didn't want them to know what _she_ had become, trapped in his sphere.

It was too shameful. She had defeated a Blight. She had stopped a civil war. She had rescued the Circle of Magi, pulled together an army, and saved a nation.

But she couldn't save one man, a man she had once loved, a man she sometimes still loved, when she didn't despise him. She couldn't save him from the ruin she'd helped make of his life.

Tears began to burn her eyes. She didn't weep often, now. Not since she'd failed to heal him.

She'd wept nearly constantly after that fateful morning she had requested an audience with him, the morning he'd raped her. She'd wept all the way back to Vigil's Keep in the aftermath of his dictum, the leather shades of her carriage pulled tightly shut to prevent anyone seeing her tears. She'd wept as she'd not done since those first days after the Landsmeet in which she had recruited Loghain, after Alistair had confronted her with such harsh, hateful words, when she knew she had lost her love to save him.

She'd never told him, because he'd never given her the chance. Throughout those months of the Blight, as they'd gathered their army to battle the archdemon, Solona had done what she did best. She'd studied. Every tome and scroll and bit of lore that came her way. Mostly, she read about the Blights and the Grey Wardens, trying to understand this threat she was meant to defeat. And in all her studies, two facts stood out.

First, each Blight ended with a Grey Warden killing the archdemon. Even though massive armies from multiple nations were gathered to battle the Blight, it was _always_ a Grey Warden who was credited with defeating the archdemon.

And second, that Grey Warden was never mentioned in history again, except in reference to where and how he or she was entombed.

It would have stood to reason, that a hero who ended a Blight would have made some mark in history thereafter. As a ruler, or general, perhaps. But no. That was never the case. Four Blights ended, four archdemons slain, four Grey Wardens never heard from again.

It became clear to Solona that the Grey Warden who killed the archdemon invariably died in the process. She didn't know why. In the end, she didn't really care why. She knew what was coming. Riordan's revelation in Redcliffe, after the fact, had only filled in the gaps in her surmise.

And so when Riordan had proposed his solution at the Landsmeet, though she hadn't been inclined to show Loghain any mercy, she'd leapt at the opportunity.

More Grey Wardens meant a better chance that she and Alistair would survive. It was as basic as that. She had no grand and glorious plan for a bright future for Ferelden, no patriotism, no real desire to do anything other than _live._ Alistair would live and she would live. It all seemed so perfectly simple and sensible.

She hadn't been prepared for Alistair's outrage. She hadn't stopped to _think_ what her decision would mean, when logic was cast aside and emotions ruled. Maker! Her whole life, that had been her weakness. She always assumed what made perfect sense to her would make sense to everyone around her. It was why she had been so disliked in the Circle Tower by the other apprentices, why they considered her callous and odd. When she went into her academic mindset, she saw things in terms of what was logical to her and not in terms of how they made other people _feel_.

But people were much more than facts and figures on a sheet of parchment, and Alistair even more so, for so much of the time he was ruled by his feelings. Sometimes all the reason in the world mattered naught.

In the end, she did what she set out to do. She and Alistair both survived. But in all her reasoning and calculation and deduction, she hadn't reckoned the cost. Alistair's life had been saved, but his soul had been destroyed. His goodness, his sweetness, all that bumbling eagerness to do what was _right_ rather than what made sense. All of it had been lost.

She bore at least some of the burden of responsibility for that. Not all of it, no. Despite his drunken rantings, she knew she _hadn't_ betrayed him. She'd tried to save him. He was a grown man. Ultimately, it had been his decision to stop trying to make the best of his situation. He had let the drink take control, let himself begin to wallow in his misery rather than trying to rise above it. But she had helped set him on the path; she could accept that portion of the blame. It was fair and logical.

Sometimes she thought Alistair was like a wounded man who refused to bind his wound or seek healing. Left open and untreated, his wound festered and putrefied and became much worse than it should ever have been. Sooner or later it would kill him, but still he wouldn't do what he needed to do to save himself. The decision not to bind his wounds and be healed was his, and his death would be his fault and no one else's. It could be prevented, and he wasn't doing so.

She had dealt him that initial wound, or at least one of them. Not intentionally, no. But she had done it nonetheless.

In her bleakest moments, she could no longer think rationally about it. When she was hurting, hurting from seeing him so destroyed, hurting from his cruel words and touches, it felt much different. In those moments, what she knew as a point of logic didn't matter. It _felt_ like it was all her fault. She should have known how he would react, should have known better than to choose the course she'd set them on. She, who was so smart, that she could reason her way through any dilemma. Irving's star pupil. How had she not known this would happen?

In those moments, she felt she deserved everything she was getting.

She was being sucked down with him.

"I'm sorry, Zevran," Solona whispered, hanging her head. "Just go. You can't help us. No one can." 

* * *

There were times when he was nearly himself, practically the Alistair she had once known. Then she could almost—_almost_—forget that he was the same man who had raped her on the floor of his study. Those times, she could love him, take him to her willingly, and it was so close to the way it once had been. She lived for those moments, because it was then that she didn't feel so utterly isolated.

But there were also nights when he was the arrogant, hateful, rage-filled man who had raped her. Sometimes she fought him. Sometimes, she even won. Though entropic magic had always been her weakest field, its principles anathema to her very logical and methodical mind, she learned a sleep spell specifically for that purpose, so that she might incapacitate him with the least chance of inflicting harm.

When she didn't win, she endured, healing herself in the morning so her maid wouldn't see the bruises he'd left behind.

Usually it wasn't bad. He was more careless than actually abusive. She'd sustained far worse during the Blight, and the siege at Amaranthine. For that matter, she'd been bruised nearly as bad by Alistair himself during the Blight, long before he began drinking. He'd always been a vigorous lover. Once his virginal insecurities had melted away, once she'd convinced him she didn't mind a little rough handling and wouldn't break, once she began to encourage him to let go and give in to his more savage desires now and then, there had been times he'd left marks on her flesh almost identical to the ones he left now.

She'd thanked him for it, then.

Now she simply tried to find her way between love and loathing, between fear and anger, between shame and self-respect. She felt the woman she had once been slipping away with each passing month, becoming more and more mired in the ruin of the man she had once loved.

She could flee, she sometimes thought. She didn't believe—usually—that he would truly punish the Grey Wardens, or the mages, if she left him. But something kept her there. The shadow of the man she'd once loved, those hints of him that sometimes peeked through, perhaps. Or possibly the challenge of solving the problem, her accursed pride telling her she could yet find a way to make it all better. Or maybe it was her own guilt, grown wildly out of proportion the more enmeshed she became.

She could flee. But instead she stayed, and waited for something to change. 

* * *

As she begged him to do, Zevran went.

She waited alone.


	4. Part 4: Contracts

_**CONTENT WARNING:**_

_This fic is **DARKFIC.** It explores the characters as they might behave when they are taken to a VERY DARK PLACE. Namely, it explores who Alistair might become married to Anora with Loghain redeemed, and how that would affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances._

_It depicts acts of __ alcoholism, substance abuse, __RAPE, coerced sex, prostitution, and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Content may be triggering and/or offensive to your sensibilities. If any or all of these themes disturbs you, please hit the back button on your browser now._

* * *

_"I'm sorry, Zevran," Solona whispered, hanging her head. "Just go. You can't help us. No-one can."_

Zevran went. He went to the nearest tavern and there he sat, unnoticed in a corner, nursing a tankard of Fereldan ale for a considerable length of time. He sat long enough for the tavern to empty and fill again, as one round of patrons filtered out and another filtered in. He sat long enough to hear all the gossip of the land.

No one, it seemed, was happy with Ferelden's reigning king and queen. Seven years now they had been on the throne—nearly thirteen for the queen—and still there was no royal heir. The queen was barren, there could be no doubt, and the king... the king was a sot who spent his time dallying with the mage—no longer _the Warden_, but simply _the mage_—rather than attending to his duties.

When he left the tavern, he went to the palace, for he had to see for himself. He had to see that the templar had become what they claimed. It didn't seem possible. Alistair, the other Warden, whose innate goodness Zevran had frequently been exasperated by and occasionally coveted. For him to have fallen so far would be shocking indeed.

For all their faults, there were astonishingly few drunkards amongst the Antivan Crows. Oh, it was not that there weren't many who sought the comfort of spirits to quell a troubling conscience, of course. But a intoxicated assassin was notoriously clumsy and indiscreet. Therefore any young Crows who developed an excessive fondness for drink, or any other such substance, wound up dead in an alley with their throats slit, often at the hands of their own masters.

Sneaking into the private chambers of a reigning monarch was, surprisingly, a new experience. He'd taken any number of prestigious contracts during his time with the Crows, but contracts on an actual king or queen were very rare. It also proved to be an insultingly easy endeavor. Getting into the queen's chambers might have been a challenge worthy for one of his skill, but the king's chambers were woefully under-protected.

It was not late when Zevran's one-time companion shuffled in, looking weary and much older than he ought to have done. From concealment, Zevran watched as he was attended by his servants, a glass of whiskey ever nearby. His words were slurred as they undressed him and prepared his bath. The king sank into the deep basin with a sigh and his body servant left.

Silently, Zevran padded forward, drawing his dagger. Its tip was at the king's throat, pricking the artery there, before Alistair opened his eyes.

He didn't look surprised to see Zevran.

"I figured it would be you, sooner or later," Alistair grunted, apparently unconcerned with his precarious position. "Before you fulfill your contract, I'd love to know who hired you, and perhaps you might give me a chance to write them a thank you note before the end. So who was it? One of the nobles? Anora? Solona?"

Disgusted, Zevran shook his head. "I am not here to kill you, my friend. Though perhaps it would be a mercy if I were. I must say, however, the fear and sorrow in the Warden's eyes makes me singularly disinclined to grant you any mercy, no matter how small."

Alistair snorted. "I haven't done anything worse to her than she did to me during the Blight. Why are you here, Zevran, if not to murder me?" he asked, once Zevran finally withdrew his dagger.

"I came to see if the rumors were true," Zevran replied, sheathing his blade. "I could not credit them when I heard."

"Yes, well, sorry to disappoint you, but it was bound to happen sometime. Not a good king, not a good husband to Anora, not a good lover to Solona. The list goes on. Why should you be any exception?" Alistair's laugh at his own humorless joke sounded delirious, or slightly mad.

"So you sit here and wallow in your self-pity and make a fool of yourself?" Zevran scoffed. "You were a better man than this, once. Or so Solona believed."

"Yeah. I was so much the better man that she couldn't wait to toss me aside and get Loghain between her thighs!"

Like magic, Zevran's dagger appeared in his hand, pressing into the skin above the throbbing pulse in Alistair's neck, pricking it. "Be careful what you say, my friend," the assassin warned very, very softly. "I owe the Warden a debt of gratitude for sparing my life. You, I owe nothing."

There was still enough sense left in the drunkard to register fear at the danger in Zevran's voice. Just barely. Alistair stared at Zevran a moment, then dropped his eyes.

"Get out," the king muttered resentfully, not quite brave enough to assume a full-blown bluster. "You've seen me. It's all true. Now leave."

"Let the Warden go," Zevran replied calmly. "Whatever claim you have on her, release it. She is sad and afraid. The man you were, he would not want that."

"I'm not the man I was. Solona saw to that. If I have to suffer here, so should she."

"Then why do you not leave?" Zevran asked. "Abdicate your throne. From the gossip in the taverns, Ferelden would not miss you. The Warden would help you go anywhere you wished to go. She worries about you."

Alistair shook his head. "Anora won't let me go. I legitimize her reign, you see, even if I am a bastard. If I leave, she'll have me executed, or assassinated, because then I become a threat to her rule. Because I might lead a rebellion against her, right?" the king's tone was heavy with derision.

"Unless there's an heir, I'm the only claim she has to the, traditionally, Theirin throne. But she's not going to get an heir off me." Again, Alistair gave that slightly mad laugh. "I told her just what she could do with that ice-cold slit of hers!"

Alistair snorted with his own humor and reached for his glass. Disgusted, Zevran slipped out as quietly as he'd slipped into the king's chambers. He doubted the king even noticed he had left. 

* * *

Solona had been in Denerim five years—and Alistair king for ten—when she was summoned urgently to the palace late one night.

"Forgive me, my lady mage—er, Warden," the chamberlain stammered apologetically. "The queen instructed me to summon you. The king is gravely ill."

Gravely ill, indeed. A porcelain basin rested on the table beside his enormous bed, splattered with blood. Flecks of the same had dried upon Alistair's lips and chin. His complexion was pallid and he groaned in pain, thrashing. His skin was clammy and sticky with dried sweat, and he muttered in a semi-conscious delirium.

"When did he begin vomiting blood?" Solona demanded briskly.

"I—er—that is, we—" the chamberlain stammered, shying away from her gaze. "Forgive me, my lady. We don't know. He's been alone in his chamber for nigh on three days. The servants tried to bring him food and tend to him and he ordered them to leave. He was—ranting. Everyone assumed it was simply that he was, well..."

"Drunk," Solona completed bluntly when the chamberlain refused to put a word to it.

"Yes, my lady."

The chamberlain looked distinctly uncomfortable as Solona's hands began to glow, power gathering at her fingertips.

"Perhaps you'd like to leave the room?" she asked archly as the man squirmed. "Inform the queen I will need to speak with her when I am done here."

"Er—as you wish, my lady," he replied with a sigh of relief, bowing as he left the room.

Solona shook her head at the absurdity of a man who was more willing to tell the queen that her husband's mistress wished to meet with her, than to be in a room where healing magic was being performed. Dismissing the man from her mind, she drew energy from the Fade and began to channel it into Alistair's body. 

* * *

"The king will die, Your Majesty, if this continues." Solona's eyes were bleak as she faced the queen.

Anora had aged since Solona had last seen her. Nearing forty, she retained considerable beauty, but it was faded, like a painting left in sunlight for years on end. Her once-shining hair was now dull. Lines were etched about her eyes and deep creases bracketed her down-turned mouth, giving her a sour demeanor that did nothing to enhance what beauty remained. Her blue eyes were shrewd and calculating.

"You're certain?" Anora asked, and Solona couldn't help but think she heard a hint of eagerness in the queen's tone.

"Absolutely." Solona nodded emphatically. Her face, she knew, bore its own engraved lines, and her mousy brown hair held some gray. But, the best part of never having beauty to begin with was that she felt no loss at the prospect of its fading. Age, Solona imagined, was no doubt a far more bitter pill to the queen than to herself.

"I've healed the bleeding wound inside him, for now," Solona continued, taking refuge in her talent and knowledge. "But magical healing can only do so much, Your Majesty. Just as with broken limbs or battle wounds, magic only accelerates the healing process. Full recovery is dependent upon the king not re-injuring the wound as the healing process completes. The spirits have burned a hole in his stomach. If he begins drinking again, the injury will return. He must stop drinking."

Solona looked down at her own thin, frail, freckled hands. "I think, Your Majesty, that we both know how likely that is to happen. He'll kill himself before he stops."

"Well, that will be a terrible loss for the kingdom, I'm certain," Anora replied coolly, and Solona could see the wheels in her mind turning. Alistair's death would benefit the queen, if anything, relieving Anora of the burden of his embarrassing and unwanted presence without compromising the legitimizing factor being wed to one of the Theirin bloodline lent her rule.

Solona knew in that instant that she must prevent it from happening. She'd _entrusted_ Anora with Alistair, once. She would not make that mistake again.

"Let him go, Your Majesty," Solona asked softly. "I'll take him away. Out of Denerim. Out of Ferelden, even. You don't need him. Let him go. Annul the marriage and release him."

"What makes you think he would leave?" the queen asked with a disdainful sniff. "He could have left any time in the last ten years. I've not been holding him here."

"He has remained here because this is where we told him he had to be, you and I and Eamon," Solona said with tears in her eyes. "He never knew he had anywhere else he _could_ go."

"Nonsense," replied Anora dismissively.

"Alistair's always done his duty," Solona insisted. "He stayed because this is where we told him he had a duty to be."

Anora rose to her feet, snapping, "And was it his _duty_ that drove him to become a drunkard and a wastrel?"

"No. It was the lack of duty that did that. And you." Anora stiffened, her mouth opening on an emphatic protest, but Solona gave her no opportunity. "Tell me, Your Majesty, was it _truly_ impossible to spare him the smallest bit of kindness?"

"I will not be blamed for the way he has lived his life!"

"We both bear some measure of responsibility for what has been wrought here, Your Majesty," Solona replied frankly. "My crimes were leaving him here with you, and redeeming your father. _Yours_ was neglect. You are right in that he chose what he has done to himself. But a kind word. A mere _hint_ of consideration!" She heard her own voice growing sharp, hysterical. "You didn't have to love him, for Andraste's sake! All you had to do was let him feel he had a bit of worth to you. That's all he ever needed from anyone! That's _all_ it might have taken, to turn the tide before it dragged him under!"

Anora glared at her angrily, and Solona glared back, suddenly furious. How long she'd ached to lay that charge at the queen's feet!

But, she realized her penchant for blunt speech was winning her no points with the queen. _Think, Amell, think!_ she commanded herself. _Think like a courtier, not a misanthrope who spends most of her life buried in books and scrolls, when she isn't wiping up the king's puke after he's passed out._

"You wouldn't have to annul the marriage," she said, after a moment of trying to figure out why her proposition was so disagreeable to the queen. "You could—you could announce that the king is desperately ill, perhaps even dying. You've sent him overseas with his healer to seek treatment in warmer climes. You'll still have the claim of being the wife of the Theirin king. I'll take him away, far away, where he'll never be a threat to you, and at some point you could spread the word that he died, or that he has to remain in seclusion for the sake of his health, or whatever it is you wish to tell Ferelden."

Anora blinked, tapping her fingers on her hips as she considered the proposition. "Just what do you think this will accomplish?" she asked after a moment.

"Perhaps, if he's away from here, he'll find a reason to stop," Solona replied honestly. "Or, at the very least, he'll have less reason to continue destroying himself."

Anora's gaze flicked away. "I think he no longer needs a reason," the queen said in a somber tone. Then she shook herself, and said briskly, "Had you approached me with this plea six months ago, I would have refused. But as it is, Alistair's presence is of no value to me any longer. For there is going to be an heir, in another four months' time."

The queen let her wrap fall open, revealing a tell-tale swelling at her waist. Astonished, Solona stared. The queen was nearing forty! What could she be thinking, trying to carry a babe at such an age?

"My midwives and healers claim the heir is healthy and thriving," the queen said complacently. "So it will cost me nothing to extend you the questionable boon of releasing Alistair into your care."

"That's not Alistair's child," Solona blurted in disbelief, once again not thinking. "This last year or so, most nights he's been so drunk he can rarely function as a man no matter how hard he tries!"

Anora's eyes narrowed, growing flinty. "Those words are treason, mage," she said dangerously. "I'm going to grant your request, for I bear my _husband_ no actual ill will, for all that I cannot abide him. Do not strain my patience."

Solona bit her tongue. "Yes. Of course, Your Majesty."

"The child is certain to have the king's coloring, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind," Anora explained. "And if there are any... odd traits that bear no resemblance to either of us, well, Alistair's mother was a serving wench, after all. No one knows what she looked like. She might even have been elven."

Solona nodded, carefully saying nothing,

"Get him out of Ferelden, discreetly," Anora commanded. "You have a fortnight before I announce the impending arrival of the Theirin heir to the kingdom. I do not want Alistair about at that time. His illness and confusion might cause him to make unpredictable and unsupportable claims about his child, after all."

"Of course, Your Majesty," Solona repeated, bowing slightly. "I will see to it." 

* * *

Long after the mage had left to tend to the king, Anora paced her study, turning over her plan in her mind. Leaving Alistair alive was a risk, of course. And yet...

She rubbed the mound mostly hidden by her carefully arranged gown and wrap. Nothing came free. This was part of the price she would pay to secure her throne.

Some hours later, before dawn, a man slipped into her chamber. An elf, as silent as a shadow. How he got past her guards, she did not know, but it wasn't the first time he'd done it.

"Thank you for answering my summons," Anora said, unperturbed by his presence. "I wished to inform you in person that I no longer require your services."

"And the matter of my price?" he asked.

"The contract is fulfilled."

"Very well, then," the elf said with a flamboyant bow. "I shall depart for my homeland on the morning tide. Good luck, fair queen."


	5. Part 5: Descent

_**CONTENT WARNING:**_

_This fic is **DARKFIC.** It explores the characters as they might behave when they are taken to a VERY DARK PLACE. Namely, it explores who Alistair might become married to Anora with Loghain redeemed, and how that would affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances._

_It depicts acts of __ alcoholism, substance abuse, __RAPE, coerced sex, prostitution, and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Content may be triggering and/or offensive to your sensibilities. If any or all of these themes disturbs you, please hit the back button on your browser now._

* * *

"Where are we going?" Alistair asked, his eyes barely fluttering open. Solona frowned; she'd hoped her sleep spell would hold until she got him aboard their ship, but he seemed to be becoming more resistant to it the more often she used it.

"Shh," she murmured, beginning to summon power to cast the incantation again. "We're leaving the palace, leaving Ferelden. We're going to go to Weisshaupt. We're going to be Grey Wardens again."

His eyes opened more fully, and a transcendent smile lit his face. For a moment, he looked so much like the sweet, eager young man she had met nearly a dozen years ago at Ostagar that she could have wept.

"Can we?" His voice was almost childishly trusting and plaintive.

"Yes," she said with assurance, though honestly she had no idea. His expression blissful, Alistair closed his eyes and Solona cast the incantation to ensure he remained asleep. 

* * *

Her last week in Ferelden had been spent in the palace. With Queen Anora's sanction, Solona repeated the process she had undertaken years ago, binding Alistair in his chamber and painstakingly nursing him through the illness that came with purging his body of the poison the spirits he drank had become to him. She suffered at his side through his delirium and rages, his hallucinations and convulsions. The fits were far more violent than they had been the first time. At one point his heart stopped, and only a timely revival spell kept him from death.

She knew then, beyond a doubt, that there could be no third time to attempt this process. Next time, it would almost certainly kill him.

While she did that, her butler—at her behest—sought discreet passage out of Ferelden for the two of them. He found it in the form of a merchant ship he said he was reasonably certain was also carrying some sort of contraband. The captain, while avaricious, was not likely to ask questions, and thus it was the perfect opportunity for a mage (who was likely to be branded an apostate if she left behind the protection of being a Grey Warden) and an exiled king to travel incognito.

It was her butler himself, and two of the grooms from her household, who conducted them in a modest hired carriage to the docks and carefully bore Alistair aboard the ship. Thanking him, once Alistair was ensconced in a hammock in the tiny cabin they had been afforded, Solona pressed into the butler's hand a purse, and bade him divide it generously amongst the staff who had served her so well and loyally during her time in Denerim. And then she was left alone on the ship with Alistair.

It was the beginning of a new life, she hoped. If she could get Alistair to Weisshaupt, perhaps he would find a purpose again, or at least she could leave him in the hands of the other Grey Wardens and finally be free of the burden of caring for him. She had letters of credit to most banks in Thedas from her solicitor in Denerim, giving her access to the funds Anora had granted her for seeing to the king's well-being. Once Alistair was on his feet, she could retire someplace in obscurity. Perhaps Rivain, where the Chantry did not hold sway so strongly, so that she wouldn't need to fear being hunted, should it be discovered that she was a mage.

The ship sailed before dawn, letting the tide carry it out to sea. They'd be on the water for months, making port only a few times to resupply their food stores, as they sailed around the northern rim of the Donarks to make port in the western Anderfels. Solona hoped it would be time enough to get Alistair back on his feet and well enough to journey across the steppes to Weisshaupt.

For the first time in years, she felt hopeful, nearly joyous. Especially as Alistair began to overcome the worst of his illness and regain his senses. He still craved wine or other spirits and asked for her to find him some a number of times. His temper, when she informed him there were none to be had, was fierce and volatile when the urge was particularly bad.

But he was himself, mostly.

Secluded in their small cabin, Solona began to show him her maps and scrolls, describe to him where they were journeying to and how she intended to get there. Mindful of his need to feel needed, she solicited his opinions, though he deferred to her judgment more often than not.

It was a good start. She could never love him again as she once had, not after all he had done. At times she had to struggle against the idea that she hated and resented him. But she could help him, and then she would be free, her obligations met and her burden of guilt ameliorated.

It was a start. 

* * *

Alistair lay wakeful in his hammock, the craving for spirits so strong his hands shook with it. He couldn't sleep, couldn't think of anything else. He despised himself for it, despised himself for the weakness. After all he had done to Solona, and all she had done for him despite it, he owed it to her to make this work. He owed it to her not to succumb again.

He ached for it. He ached for that blessed numbness, the oblivion that spirits brought. Even though he knew what it meant, knew it would make him into a monster and kill him, still he yearned for it. It was stronger than him, stronger than his will to live, stronger than his desire to make amends to Solona.

Each time he thought of what he owed her, each time he thought of the things he had done to her, he wanted it more. Just one drink. A goblet of wine. A tankard of ale. Anything. Just one. The thoughts of what he'd done, how awful he had been, did nothing to lessen the craving; they only made it worse. Each time he tried to think of being a man who might be even remotely worthy of her forbearance, it got worse. He wriggled and shifted and lay there in his cot with his palms and upper lip sweating, thinking of how good it would feel.

Just one. Just one. Surely somewhere on this ship, there was a bottle of wine and someone willing to let him have one drink from it.

Just one. Just one. Just _one._

"Just one," he whispered to himself, slipping out of his hammock and creeping silently from the cabin, leaving Solona sleeping.

It was a warm summer night on the Amaranthine Ocean, and it would get warmer the further north they traveled. He hadn't dared put his boots on for fear of waking Solona, but it was comfortable enough to stroll the wooden deck without them. This late at night, there were only a few sailors on deck, dicing and laughing.

Several of them had bottles in their hands. Alistair migrated toward them.

"Ho! If it ain't one of our mysterious passengers!" the sailor hooted as Alistair drew near. "Look lively, mates! 'Is lordship's emerged from 'is chambers!"

"Eve'nin', yer lordship!" Another sailor said with a mocking bow. "Care for a game of dice?"

"Actually, I—er—" Alistair licked his lips, his hands shaking as he stared at the bottle one of the sailors lifted to his mouth. "I was just looking for a bottle of wine. To help me sleep. The, uh, creaking of the ship keeps me awake, you see. I thought perhaps one of you might know..."

"Eh, if 'ere's any wine aboard, the cap'n keeps it in 'is own stash," the sailor answered. "If 'e carried enough for th' whole crew, 'e'd ne'er turn a profit, right?"

"Of... of course," Alistair said, practically hunching over at the pain of disappointment.

"'Ere, mate." The sailor gave him a gap-toothed grin and patted the planks beside him. "'Ave a game with me an' the lads. We might not 'ave any wine, but there's rum a'plenty."

"Rum?"

"Haha! Blacker'n the Black City itself," the sailor cackled. "Might not be agree'ble to yer lordship's refined tastes, though. It'll cut a hole through yer gut, but ye won't have no more trouble sleepin'."

"I, um, don't have any coin," Alistair said, his fingers itching to snatch the bottle as he heard the contents slosh. "For the game."

"Yer lady looked like she 'as coin," one of them muttered, but Alistair quailed at the thought of trying to find Solona's purse without waking her.

"Wha' 'bout that bauble 'e's wearin'?" Another sailor asked, and Alistair's hand closed over the mended symbol of Andraste, the one that had belonged to his mother. The one that Arl Eamon had repaired for him, that Solona had given to him.

The bottle sloshed again as it was passed to another sailor, and he up-ended it to drink.

"Right," Alistair said eagerly, stripping off the amulet and sitting on the deck, laying it in the midst of their pile of coins. "I guess that'll do."

The first sailor he'd spoken to, a short fellow who looked like he might be half-dwarf, held out a meaty paw. "Name's Llew, yer lordship. Welcome to th' game." 

* * *

Solona awoke in a panic, when she noticed Alistair's hammock empty. Frantically, she threw a modest kirtle over her shift—she dared not wear a mage's robes, for fear of how the sailors would react if they discovered there was a mage aboard—and left the cabin in search of him.

She found him slumped beside a stack of crates on the deck, an empty bottle in his hand. The odor of whatever he had drunk was sweet and cloying, not sharp and pungent like the whiskey he had favored back in Denerim. Other than that, the situation was much the same.

For a moment, frustrated tears burned her eyes, as her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She envisioned trying to wrestle Alistair to his feet, or her humiliation as she tried to request help from one of the crew in getting him back to the cabin. She envisioned tying him to one of the beams from which their hammocks were suspended, and what would be required in keeping him there for the long months of their journey. She imagined his rages and curses.

She couldn't do it. Maker help her, she simply couldn't.

Hopelessness and despair crashed over her like waves in a storm-driven sea. All of it. Everything she had done. It had all been for naught.

She felt tired, suddenly. So unbearably tired. Too weary even for tears, she turned around and made her way back to the tiny cabin they shared. The wound in Alistair's stomach was almost completely healed, courtesy of her magic and nearly three weeks abstinence from spirits. She could at least be certain he wasn't in imminent danger of death, unless he staggered overboard in his drunkenness.

It would have to do.

She could do no more. 

* * *

The sailors were his friends. Llew and Conrad and a dozen others. There was even a qunari among them; he wasn't quite as friendly as the others, but he wasn't nearly as prickly and stern as Sten had been.

It was marvelous to have them. They were always eager to share a drink with him and engage him in a game of dice. They didn't frown at him, didn't shame him for having a drink or humiliate him. They didn't make him feel like a failure.

Not like Solona. Each time he made his way back to the cabin, she was there, silent as a wraith. She didn't speak to him, didn't look at him except to bestow upon him resentful, betrayed glares. She no longer tried to speak with him about their plans for going to Weisshaupt, or encourage him with thoughts of being a Grey Warden again.

One night, with the rum warming him, Alistair returned to the cabin early. He felt an aching need that he hadn't indulged in far too long, roused to an eager pitch by the sailors' crude talk of the magnificent bosom and backside that her gowns hinted at. He wanted her softness, her warmth. He wanted the tight heat of being inside her. How long had it been? Months, it seemed, since he'd felt like a man.

The second he tried to touch her, her power flared out. A repulsion field flung him against the cabin wall as she shot to her feet, glaring at him. Cursing her, Alistair tried to summon the holy energy that would put her down and drain her magic, but the concentration and force of will were slow in coming to him, and before he could bring it to bear against her, Solona encased him in ice.

In a magnificent rage, she stood before him, her eyes flashing angrily. "I can't stop you from forcing yourself upon me, if you manage to get your mind together enough to smite me. I know that. But I tell you, here and now, if you do so, be prepared never to sleep again. We're no longer in Ferelden, where I need fear the retribution of the Chantry, or the public backlash against mages, if I should kill the king. I will burn you to a cinder, the moment your eyes close. I will turn this _entire ship_ into so much charred wreckage, adrift in the middle of the ocean! Even if it means my own death, I will _destroy_ you. Get out! Go find your comforts in a bottle and leave me be. I want nothing to do with you!"

When the ice melted, he went.

The sailors were his friends. It felt good, to be a part of a group again. Good to be accepted. He hadn't known that feeling since the Blight. Solona threw him out, refused to acknowledge him, but they were always eager for his company.

"Madcap button, mate?" Conrad, a large, burly sailor offered, holding out a pouch to Alistair. Blinking drunkenly, Alistair withdrew a thin, fibrous wafer from the pouch.

"What is it?"

Llew laughed, taking a wafer for himself and popping it on his tongue. "Ye didn't think all our cargo was legal, did ye?" he asked with a snort. "Cap'n's got the secret 'old crammed to the beams with madcaps, 'e does. Ain't no other land in Thedas with a climate better suited to growin' 'em, ye see, than Ferelden. An' we get some as our cut o' the profits."

Nodding as though this made sense to him, Alistair laid the wafer upon his tongue. 

* * *

The world was wavy and indistinct. It was like being in the Fade, but the colors! Maker, the colors were extraordinary. Even at night, in the moonlight, or the lamp-light belowdecks, everything was so bright, it sparkled.

He felt alive, gloriously, energetically alive. It was far better than drink. Far better than anything he had ever known. It was like being caught in the dazzling, delirious instant prior to orgasm and suspended there indefinitely.

How long he lingered in that state, he didn't know. It might have been hours, or days, or weeks. His friends, the sailors, were always there. If their laughter at times seemed like the threatening leers of demons, it didn't bother him. He laughed along with him, even when somewhere in the recesses of his mind it seemed they were laughing _at_ him.

There amongst his friends, there was already rum, or those marvelous madcap buttons. Always laughter and goodwill. He stopped caring about Solona's disapproval, or his anger at her, or any of it. He slept where he crumpled when he'd had too much rum or when the madcap began to wear off. Sometimes he made it back to his hammock, sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he awoke with a pounding headache, for which Solona refused healing.

He sought out his new friends, in their crowded cabin belowdecks.

"Got a button?" Alistair asked, his tongue thick in his mouth as he sidled up to Conrad, the burly sailor who'd first let him sample the madcap buttons.

"Ye 'ear that, lads? 'Is lordship wants another button!"

He was sober enough to feel a little uneasy at their harsh laughter, and he didn't much like the feeling. These fellows were his friends, after all.

"Well, now, we've been talkin' 'bout that, yer lordship," Llew said, reclining in a hammock and cleaning his fingernails with the point of a knife. "We've been entertainin' ye fer weeks, now. Ye drink our rum an' use our buttons, but ye ain't got any coin to spare for a game o' dice, now that pretty trinket ye wore is gone. Them buttons is coin out o' our own pockets. It's time to pay up, yer lordship."

"I don't... have anything," Alistair muttered, shame-faced. Solona flatly refused to part with any coin so he could dice with the sailors, and she was always there, always watching, so he couldn't search for her purse in secret.

"Well, then, we'll jus' 'ave ta barter, won't we, yer lordship?" Llew offered, his voice congenial, but firm. "Yer lady ain't much ta look at, but she's clean, an' it'll be weeks still before we make port again. Most o' the lads ain't ever 'ad a woman who ain't a dockside whore what's 'ad a thousand men before. If she might be persuaded to show us a bit o' charm, we jus' might turn out ta have more rum and buttons to spare."

Cold panic clawed at Alistair's chest as the import of what they were saying settled in. "But—no! She would never do that!" he said desperately. "Maker, she'd burn my balls off for even having this conversation!"

Llew shrugged and turned away, plainly dismissing Alistair. "Well, then. It was nice knowin' ye, yer lordship. Best ye get back to yer lady, 'fore she decides to put a leash on ye."

His heart was pounding, his temples throbbing. Every part of Alistair ached with the need for some rum, or for the blessed euphoria of the madcap buttons. He felt lost and bereft at the sudden disdain of his friends, who had been so welcoming before. Confused and practically staggering with the ache of needing what they were refusing, Alistair turned to leave the crew cabin.

"Come 'ere, yer lordship," Conrad's deep, booming voice halted him. Alistair turned hopefully, to see Conrad holding a madcap button in his hand. Alistair rushed toward him, but the giant of a man jerked it away from his grasping hands. "Ye want this, ye gotta pay for it."

Trying to make sense of the refusal, Alistair stared at the man as Conrad untied the drawstring of his billowy linen breeches. He grabbed Alistair roughly by the hair and pushed at him, trying to force him down, force him to his knees. "Yer prettier than yer lady, anyway, and there ain't much difference between one mouth an' another when a man's been at sea for months."

The cock that was revealed as Conrad pushed his breeches down was intimidatingly large and half-erect already. Alistair's terrified eyes flew from it to Conrad's grizzled, beard-covered, pock-marked face, hoping for a reprieve, hoping for his friend to yield and give him the desperately-needed button without... without requiring Alistair to do what he seemed to be demanding.

"Well? Ye want the button, don't ye?" Conrad taunted, stroking a massive fist up and down the cock, bringing it more erect with each pump.

"I can't!" Alistair whispered in horror. To his humiliation, he could feel desperate tears burning his eyes.

"Suit yerself," Conrad shrugged, beginning to hitch up his breeches and turn away.

"_Please!_" Alistair cried urgently, feeling as though he might vomit, though from the need for the madcap, or the prospect of what Conrad was asking him to do, he couldn't say.

Conrad turned back to Alistair and stared at him impassively, and after a long moment, Alistair dropped his eyes, defeated. With an eager chuckle, Conrad pushed his breeches down, and Alistair sank to his knees.

He did vomit, after he forced his lips to part and Conrad's cock thrust inside. Sickened by the texture, the odor of the unwashed sailor, the knowledge of what he was doing, he wrenched away and puked, though there was little but rum in his stomach. Conrad waited until the heaving had stopped, then hauled him back up by his hair and slapped Alistair in the face with his cock.

Weeping, Alistair opened his mouth and accepted it. At a growled command, he licked and sucked, and when his untutored efforts were unsatisfactory, Conrad grabbed his head and began fucking his mouth with deep, rough thrusts, while Llew and the rest of the sailors he had thought were his friends laughed and made vulgar comments. Alistair choked and spewed again when the thick head of that meaty cock rammed against the back of his mouth, but Conrad allowed him only a moment to catch his breath, and then continued. He drove his cock deep into Alistair's throat over and over while Alistair fought and beat at him weakly with his fists and struggled for air.

Just when Alistair thought he was going to pass out, a torrent of hot, bitter fluid flooded his mouth. He fell to his hands and knees and spat out the slimy mess, retching on the dirty floor of the crew cabin. He sobbed with disgust and despair, torn between wanting to die and wanting what they had promised him.

"'Ere, yer lordship," Conrad said, his voice loud and jolly, full of satisfaction. He clapped Alistair on the back as though they were friends again, as though nothing was amiss, and handed him the promised madcap button.

Moaning, Alistair put it on his tongue and sucked, grateful for its sour burn to wash away the lingering taste of Conrad's semen in his mouth. The madcap bulb juice infusing the thin, fibrous reed wafer began to work its magic, and gradually, his sickness and disgust began to dissipate, leaving only color and light and beautiful joy.

It didn't occur to him to protest when, sometime later, another cock appeared before his face. Alistair knew what was required, and what the reward would be. He took it. He took those deep, battering thrusts into his throat, choking him. Took the bitter rush of seed that pumped into his mouth so far back he couldn't spit it out, but had to swallow.

Another madcap button made its way into his hands, and he meant to save it, for later, for when he needed it. But instead he sucked the juices from it avidly and spat out the drained wafer, and his euphoria redoubled.

Time ceased to matter. Alistair drifted in and out of bliss. He came back to himself briefly when he was flung down face-first, bent over a rough wooden table. His own breeches were dragged away and someone spat. Then there was pain, horrible, tearing pain piercing his euphoria, making him scream.

He heard Llew's voice panting in his ear, telling Alistair what a nice, tight _woman_ he was. It was Llew, his friend, mocking him, ripping him open, gripping his hips and driving into him again and again. And then another wave of the madcap bliss overtook him and it didn't matter. The pain was distant and unreal, the humiliation and burning shame of no consequence as long as that feeling went on and on.

Finally, Llew stopped thrusting and went away. Alistair lay there, delirious, with seed dripping from his ass. A stranger took Llew's place, and then another, demanding his mouth this time. Alistair took it, fighting only when the rapture faded as the madcap's effects wore off until another button appeared and then he stopped fighting and just floated. Savage growling and searing agony were his only indication that the qunari sailor was taking his turn. He heard shrieking and vaguely thought it might be his own. But then another surge of bliss was upon him and Alistair passed out before the qunari was finished.


	6. Part 6: Freedom

_**CONTENT WARNING:**_

_This fic is **DARKFIC.** It explores the characters as they might behave when they are taken to a VERY DARK PLACE. Namely, it explores who Alistair might become married to Anora with Loghain redeemed, and how that would affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances._

_It depicts acts of __ alcoholism, substance abuse, __RAPE, coerced sex, prostitution, and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Content may be triggering and/or offensive to your sensibilities. If any or all of these themes disturbs you, please hit the back button on your browser now._

* * *

_A/N: I always had the personality of the Amell from the kink-meme fill Carnal Knowledge roughly in mind when I wrote this character, so I have decided to just go for it and borrow Amell's pre-Blight activities from that story as well, with the author's permission._

* * *

Sleep. That was what she had been missing, and what she wanted more than anything in the Maker's world. Sleep.

And so Solona slept. After the day she awoke to find Alistair had begun drinking again, she slept. She slept for hours and hours, and sometimes it felt like days. Sometimes she woke in the small hours of the night to lay in her hammock, staring at the low ceiling of the cabin, keenly aware of Alistair's absence and knowing he was with the sailors, destroying himself. The thought made her feel angry and betrayed, but it was inevitably followed by another overwhelming wave of weariness, until finally she slept again.

She ate little, and most days it seemed like too much effort even to retrieve a ewer of water and bathe herself. Her hair hung in greasy, straggling tendrils and her clothes were rumpled from sleeping in them constantly. She suspected she smelled as ugly as she looked, but who was there to notice, except occasionally for Alistair, who would stagger in, reeking himself, only to promptly pass out.

When she did rouse from her hammock, she could not be bothered to find the captain and ascertain their location or the number of days to their next port of call. Her books and scrolls and maps no longer held any interest for her; she stared at them listlessly, not caring about whether her plan to get Alistair to Weisshaupt would come to fruition. She only cared about sleeping again.

Alistair began coming back to the cabin less and less often. Only when she realized she had lost track of the days since she had seen him did Solona drag herself out of her hammock. It seemed an enormous effort, especially considering she had always been the sort to wake at dawn's first light, energized and ready to discover what new knowledge the day held. Her apathy was most uncharacteristic and she began to feel disturbed by it. So she forced herself to rouse, to bathe and dress in clean smallclothes and a fresh shift and kirtle.

She had to find Alistair. No matter how angry and betrayed she felt, she had to be certain he was still well. She had been avoiding him for far too long. It wasn't like her.

It was nearly dusk, she surmised, when she stepped onto the ship's deck. It seemed that summer was beginning to pass into autumn, for there was a chill in the air that hadn't been there the last time she had emerged from her cabin for any length of time. Maker! How long had she been in her hammock, wallowing in apathy?

There were sailors about, but she didn't know which ones were Alistair's acquaintances or how they would respond to her attempts to locate him. So she set off by herself, searching the deck first, and then the low, narrow passages that led down to the crew cabin and cargo holds.

It was there she found him; not in the crew cabin with his newfound friends, but in a dark, shadowed corner of one of the passages to the cargo holds. From the filth and debris, it seemed that this was where he was staying, sleeping on the wooden planks that formed the decking.

He was not alone, and so she tucked herself behind a stack of barrels lining the passage. A man in a sailor's rough garb stood with his back to her, and Alistair was blinking up at him, a pleading expression on his face, which was pale and haggard. He didn't appear to have shaved or bathed in weeks.

"You promised," he rasped

"Ye know what the price is, ye sot," the sailor replied with a malicious chuckle.

"Please. I'm thirsty. Can I have some rum first?"

The sailor didn't respond, but merely began to untie and push down his breeches. With a sick look, Alistair leaned into him, his mouth open.

Solona bit into her hand to keep from gasping and giving away her presence.

"Ye want rum?" the sailor growled. "Have some rum, mate!"

Alistair recoiled, coughing and spluttering, and only when she saw him spit out a torrent of clear amber liquid did she realize what the sailor had done. Outrage washed her vision in red, and she felt her power trying to rise, ready to burn the sailor down with a thought. But she couldn't! These men did not know she was a mage, and if she was found out, it could mean her death and Alistair's both.

Solona choked on a sob, as Alistair allowed the sailor to kneel behind him and jerk down Alistair's breeches. She winced as the sailor's hips snapped forward in a single violent push, biting her lip hard enough to bleed when Alistair gave a pained grunt and the sailor's hips slapped against Alistair's skin.

"Ye're looser than th' cheapest dockside doxy!" the sailor spat, panting as he thrust. Alistair sobbed and moaned brokenly until the sailor finally grew still and shuddered. He shoved Alistair roughly aside and rose. "Broke in like this, it's not worth th' bother, 'specially with the stink o' ye! Find someone else ta give ye yer buttons. I'm done wit' ye!"

"_Please!_" Alistair cried. "Just one! Just one more! I'll do anything!"

"Take it!" the sailor muttered in disgust, flinging something down beside Alistair and hitching up his breeches. Scrambling, Alistair retrieved what had fallen and she saw him pop it into his mouth. Then the sailor walked away from Alistair, disappearing into the crew cabin. Solona took a look at the blissful expression on Alistair's begrimed face as he sucked on whatever the sailor had given him, and fled.

She made it back to the deck before she was ill over the side of the ship. She sat there huddled against the rail for what seemed to be hours, letting the cool night air calm her churning stomach while her mind spun wildly as she tried to find a way out of this for them.

They couldn't remain on the ship all the way to the Anderfels. That much was certain. The sailors were harming him; she must get Alistair away from them. She would need to speak with the captain about disembarking early, even if it meant sacrificing the fare she had paid for their passage.

Pushing herself to her feet, she went to seek out the captain, a Navarran man by the name of Joachim. She'd realized early in their voyage that her butler had been right; his eyes _were_ hard and avaricious, but he had been more or less courteous in her discussions with him.

His first mate told her the captain had retired for the night, but that he would not yet be sleeping if she wished to speak with him. Nodding, Solona made her way to the cabin beside the one she shared with Alistair and rapped upon the wooden door.

"Forgive the interruption, Captain Joachim," Solona began when he tipped his head deferentially toward her. A golden hoop glittered in his earlobe; it had reminded her of Duncan the first time she saw him, and did so again now, she realized with a pang of longing. The short, dark bristle on his chin and longer hair were more similar to Riordan, however. He was soft-spoken but authoritative, like Nathaniel, and often his eyes held a maliciously humorous gleam reminiscent of Anders.

She missed them. How she missed them all, her fellow Grey Wardens. She'd never had much use for other people, having learned long ago in the tower that they found her insatiable drive for knowledge and her lack of social graces bizarre and off-putting. But she'd been alone so very, very long with nothing but a drunken, self-destructive king and servants for company.

Shaking her head to dismiss the morose turn of her thoughts, Solona continued, "I only became aware tonight that some of your sailors are... well, _abusing_ the man I brought aboard with me. I must insist you put a stop to it."

His brows lifted as though she had surprised him, but the captain said nothing. He merely held open the door to his cabin and extended an arm to invite her inside.

"Would you care for a cup of wine?" he asked after he had closed the door. "It's not a very good vintage; I find it doesn't pay to carry expensive wines when a particularly rough storm might destroy the whole stock."

"No, thank you, Captain," Solona replied stiffly. "Forgive me for being impolite, but this is a matter of some urgency. You cannot allow your men to continue mistreating Al... my friend."

"Hm," he said impassively, stroking the dark scruff beneath his chin. "Forgive _me_ for being impolite, mistress, but as I understand it, your friend does a fairly thorough job of mistreating himself."

Solona gasped and drew back as though the captain had struck her, blinking against a sudden urge to cry. She didn't cry; she hadn't cried in years. Alistair had long ago wrung all the tears from her.

"He is... very ill, ser," she said, bowing her head in acknowledgment of his point. "I'm trying to help him, but I can't do that while your men are egging him on."

"Ill? Is that the word for it?" Captain Joachim sneered, his voice still soft and smooth, but venomous. "There's nary a swabby on my deck who isn't bound to kill himself with some vice or another, someday. Rum. Madcaps. A pox from an over-fondness for dockside whores. An unfortunate duel after they can't make good on their gaming debts. They're idiots, all of them. I don't call that ill, I call it weak."

Solona glared at him. "Be that as it may, Captain, you must stop them. I did not pay for our passage so that your crew might make his condition worse."

He gave a brusque shake of his head. "I won't," he said firmly. "What vices my men—or my passengers, for that matter—indulge in are not my affair. They're not holding your friend captive, mistress. If he's drinking with them, dicing with them, or being buggered by them, it's his own choice and his own problem. If I made a habit of interfering, I'd have a mutiny on my hands. So long as they do their jobs, what they do on their own time is their business and I don't involve myself. If they _don't_ do their jobs, they'll find themselves bound to the mast with their backs scourged."

"You can't believe he's subjected himself to what they're doing to him willingly!"

"I don't see him tied up or fighting, mistress."

"You don't know him! He wouldn't _choose_ this! No one in their right mind would!"

The captain crossed his arms over his chest and raised a mocking eyebrow at her. "Right mind or no, who chose for him, do you think?"

"_I don't know!_" Solona shouted at the hateful, pitiless man.

"You can't save him, mistress," he said coldly, implacably. His tone was empty, devoid of feeling. Once again she was reminded of Duncan, as he'd been in the instant before he killed Ser Jory. "He doesn't want to be saved. He's chosen his own way. Let him go and get on with your life."

Her heart was thundering in her chest and the sickening, coppery taste of fear and rage had flooded her mouth. She shook her head wildly from side to side, trying to deny his merciless words. To her astonishment, she found her hands were curled into thin, rigid claws, as though she would fly at him and shred his face.

Instead, she launched herself at him and kissed him; gracelessly, desperately. Her furled fingers gripped the back of his neck and dug in until he growled at the pain and wetness beneath her fingertips told her she had drawn blood. But he did not push her away or deny her. Instead, his hands closed over her upper arms in a bruising grasp, jerking her closer, and opening to her tongue as she thrust it roughly between his lips, countering it with his own.

How long had it been? Maker, how long had it been since she'd touched a man with true passion, rather than merely submitting to Alistair's drunken caresses, or even welcoming them when she was lonely and had no one else? How long since she had chosen, truly chosen?

Not since the Blight. Not since Alistair had been Alistair and they had hungered insatiably for each other amidst all the chaos and uncertainty and death. More than a decade, since she'd really unleashed the woman within her, the woman many so easily missed behind the books and the unkempt hair and the homely, freckled face. The woman Duncan had taught to make love using her senses.

Solona practically screamed her hunger and all the years of futile frustration into the captain's mouth. His hands closed roughly over her breasts and squeezed, pinching her nipples in a way that made her knees weaken.

She jerked his linen shirt from the waist of his breeches, her nails gouging his back as they shoved up underneath the fabric to find his skin. Holy Andraste, his flesh felt good! Warm skin and hard, corded muscle. She clung to him and cursed him when his lips left hers to close hot and wet upon the pulse at her neck. She cursed him for the implacable truths he had spoken, for his lack of sympathy, for awakening the fury and passion she thought had died years ago. She hated him, hated him for not helping her, hated him for not pitying her, hated him for not caring about her plight.

But she couldn't stop touching him. She wanted to take that absolute lack of pity—much less self-pity—and draw it deep into herself. She wanted every bit of his coldness, his hardness, his immovability. It didn't matter that he was a stranger, and likely a criminal, or that she had no reason to trust him whatsoever. She wanted to _become_ him, or at soak him through her skin until he become part of her.

The captain pulled away and ripped the shirt over his head, revealing his hard chest. Solona attacked it, with lips and teeth, claws and tongue. Sucking, biting, licking, pinching. Her short, ragged nails left blood-filled furrows on his flesh, but he didn't protest. He returned her violence; not forcing her, no, but giving back to her everything she gave him in equal measure. He grabbed her hair and jerked her head back and his lips and teeth savaged her neck, the bristle of his chin burning her skin.

She didn't protest when he shredded the neckline of her kirtle and split the shift underneath to lay claim to her breast with a hard, grasping hand. Instead, she helped him part the fabric when it tangled about her, frantic to free herself from its restraint. She _climbed_ him, scrabbling up, her legs wrapping tightly about his waist as she thrust her breasts into his face with imperious commands to _suck_ and _bite_, until her flesh was speckled with bruises and rings of teeth marks.

"Hurt me," Solona panted, clutching him harder. His fingertips gripped her nipple and clamped down. Not enough. Not enough! She wanted the sensation to match the searing, gloriously vital _rage_ that was flooding her being, cleansing her like a fire blazing through a plague-infested tenement. "_Hurt me!_"

He did. Maker, he did, and she hurt him back and it made her feel alive like nothing in the last decade had done. He gripped her underneath her backside and bore her to a wooden table strewn with charts and maps and threw her down upon it so hard she saw stars. Eagerly, she lifted her hips and pulled her skirts up as he ripped away her smallclothes. There was a moments pause as he shoved down his breeches and then he grabbed her hips and slammed into her with a single hard thrust.

"Yes!" Solona growled, even as her body arched and tried to push away from him, unprepared to be entered so hard and suddenly after so many months abstinence. There were breathless, wild sounds, like an enraged animal, and they were _hers_. She didn't care. Her knees gripping his ribs and her hips thrust up to meet him and the ache of being filled and stretched abated.

Only pleasure was left as the captain began to drive into her. His dark hair escaped its queue as she gripped his head with her hands, holding him close, and grabbed his earlobe between her teeth and bit savagely into it.

One of her hands moved down her body to her nub and began to stroke as she commanded, "Harder. Harder!" His hips snapped, thrusting furiously and she came with a feral cry, seizing and shuddering around him.

"More!" she gasped when the flares of light had dissipated.

His endurance was endless, she discovered, and his capacity for making it hurt just the way she needed it to hurt knew no limits. She pushed at him, sent him reeling away and leapt off the table to pin him to the floor, taking him within her and riding him furiously. Then she was on her knees, clutching the leg of the rough wooden table to prevent being driven across the floor as he pounded into her from behind. And standing, wrapped around him again, with her back against the wall of the cabin, screaming and wailing as he thrust deep, so painfully, impossibly deep. Climax after climax cascaded over her, leaving her limp and sweating and finally nearing exhausting when he gave his final thrusts and spent inside her.

He pulled away from the wall and let go his grip on her backside. She unwound her legs from the captain's waist and tried to stand, but her knees would not support her, and so she sank to the floor.

He made no effort to hold her or be tender, but merely dropped down hard upon the chair, panting. He poured a cup of wine from a bottle and offered it to Solona as she huddled there in the tattered remnants of her gown, stunned at what she had done. She accepted and drank it thirstily, her mouth parched and her throat raw from screaming. There wasn't a part of her that didn't ache. She would have to run to risk of using some magic to heal herself or she would be limping come tomorrow.

Captain Joachim had bloody furrows on his back and chest and even on his buttocks. Normally, simple courtesy would demand she heal him as well, but she didn't dare take the risk.

Instead, she asked, "Is there nothing you can do to help my... friend?"

Again, he shook his head, stretching and testing his own aches. "If he's on madcaps, mistress, he's as good as gone."

As though her confusion had been pursed, she felt remarkably clear-headed. The scholarly part of her mind took over and she inquired, "I'm only familiar with the madcap bulb in passing. It's not used in any of the potions I know, though I've seen it used for a coating on traps. I've never heard of these... these buttons. What are they?"

Pulling up his breeches and lacing them, the captain rose. He retrieved a small leather pouch from a sea chest and tossed it to her. Solona caught it, fumbling a bit, and opened it to pull out a thin slice of reed that reeked like sour wine.

"Each person who makes them has their own recipe, of course," explained the captain. "Some blends are more poisonous than others. Those of us who can control ourselves and only take one from time to time do just fine. Others, well... anyone who uses them often enough ends up dead, and the ones who do don't stop. Your friend is heading that way fast."

"And you carry these aboard your ship?" Solona demanded, her voice rising with indignation.

Joachim shrugged. "There are plenty of people willing to pay extravagantly to kill themselves. If they didn't pay me, they'd pay someone else. Why shouldn't I turn a profit off their stupidity and weakness?"

She stared at the harmless-looking wafer as though hypnotized by it. What had Alistair found in these that made it worth the degradation he was suffering now?

"You use them, sometimes?" At his impassive nod, she asked, "What's it like?"

"You suck on them, suck the juice out. Then for an hour or two, you think you're in the Maker's own Golden City before the fall."

She continued to stare at it, disbelieving. Such a small, unassuming thing. A bit of reed, with a bit of juice in it. How could it destroy a man? She wanted to understand. She felt that core of curiosity that was the very foundation of who she was calling out for knowledge. Maybe if she understood, she could find a way to break the hold it had over him.

Impulsively, Solona popped it in her mouth. It seared her tongue, burning. Saliva flooded her mouth, and she wondered if, on the other side of that burn, once she swallowed, would there be an end to misery and confusion and uncertainty?

Gagging, she spat it out, and used the shredded rags that had been her kirtle to wipe her the inside of her mouth before taking another long draught of wine.

That was not the way for her.

"Thank you, captain, for your time and, well..."

His eyes gleaming in with that wicked humor that reminded her of Anders. "You're welcome, mistress. I'm sorry about your friend."

"Thank you," she murmured, gathering the remains of her kirtle about her. It provided nothing for the sake of modesty, but she only needed to go to her own cabin, next door. "We'll, um... we'll be leaving the ship, then, at our next port."

Again, that calm, unconcerned shrug. "We'll make port in Rialto in two days' time. I'll refund a portion of your fare."

Nodding in acceptance, Solona left. 

* * *

Alistair was in their cabin when she returned, leaning against a wall and swaying slightly with a dazed, dreamy expression on his face. He was filthy. He reeked of vomit and urine and the seed of who knew how many men, and yet he had the nerve to look vaguely blissful.

"_Damn you!_" Solona cried, falling on him and beating at his chest and shoulders with her fists. It didn't matter that the shredded remains of her gown had fallen open, baring her breasts, or that she had the seed of another man seeping down her thighs. She couldn't care less about her modesty or dignity. All she knew was fury and despair.

"Curse you to the Black City and back!" she shouted, hitting at him futilely. He did nothing to ward her off. He made no attempt to shield himself from her blows, nor did he even register discomfort at them. "_Fight_, blast you! Fight me! Do something. Damn you, why won't you _fight?_"

She dissolved into sobs, collapsing against him, clutching his filthy shirt as she wept with great racking, heaving, keening screams of despair. She shook him and pushed at him and hit him again.

All he could muster when she looked at his face was to blink in confusion. "Huh?"

Another torrent of tears flooded down her face. "I don't want you to die!" she sobbed, wrapping her arms around him and holding him, unmindful of his filth. "Please, Alistair. Oh, Maker, _please!_ Fight this. Please, won't you try? Please!"

He staggered against her and she sank to her knees, unable to bear his weight. He fell over onto the rocking deck and Solona lay beside him, weeping softly a heartbroken mantra of _please... please... please..._

* * *

They made port in Rialto two days later. Solona bathed Alistair and got him a clean change of clothing, but she made no effort to constrain him to their cabin. It turned out to be unnecessary to do so. He slept most of those last two days of the journey, sometimes dreaming fitfully in his hammock but often completely unable to be roused.

They were near enough to Antiva City she thought perhaps she might try to locate Zevran. Perhaps she could enlist his aid in getting Alistair to someplace safe, someplace where she could keep him away from his own worst impulses and try to purge him of the poisons again. It seemed risky after the way he'd reacted the last time she'd done it, but there didn't seem to be a choice. Perhaps keeping him bound longer—rather than days, weeks, or maybe a couple of months—after the purging might finally break him of his compulsion.

The prospect left Solona feeling hopeless and weary, as she had felt when she slept for days on end aboard Captain Joachim's ship. She wanted to curl up and sleep again, each time she thought of it, sleep and never wake to deal with the nightmare reality that would be entailed in such an endeavor.

Instead, she roused Alistair once the ship made port and painstakingly supported him down the gangplank to the docks, desperately afraid he would collapse or lose his balance and send them both crashing to the ground. She hired a cart to take them to a rooming house to secure lodgings and then to a moneylender where she might turn in one of the letters of credit she had been given. Alistair was in no shape to run such errands. He was looking pale and sickly, and she imagined that if he didn't get hold of some spirits within the next few hours, he would start to suffer fits again. But she didn't dare leave him unsupervised for fear he might wander away seeking spirits or madcap.

The daylight had faded into dusk when the livery she had hired deposited them at the end of a long, narrow alley. The conveyance was too wide to travel the alley, and the entrance to their boarding house was several doors down. She paid the coachman and as the clopping of the horse-hooves faded away, urged Alistair to shuffle along with her, noting with alarm that his skin felt clammy.

"I need rum," he muttered. It was the first words he'd spoken all day. "Please, Solona."

"It's inside," she lied. "Let's get you inside and you'll be fine."

"'Ello, mate!" a voice called out behind them, and Solona whirled in alarm to see four of the sailors from Captain Joachim's ship standing in a line across the mouth of the alley. "We followed ye from the docks to see 'ow ye were farin' in yer new lodgin's."

"Hey!" Alistair called, suddenly animated, as though they were long-lost comrades. Solona had to grasp his arm to keep him from walking to them. "Lemme go, Solona. My friends are here."

"Alistair, stop! They're not your friends. Don't you remember how they treated you?" He blinked at her, shaking his head in confusion. Glaring at the sailors, she shouted, "Go away! Go back to your ship! You're not wanted here!"

"Hey, mate, we brought you some buttons!" The sailor said with a vicious smile, waving a pouch. "Though, that's a fair amount o' coin them buttons is worth. We'll need somethin' in trade."

Beneath her restraining hand, Alistair shuddered. "But I don't..."

"Ah, mate, don't ye remember what ye said on the ship?" The sailor looked at Solona, his eyes gleaming. "Ye're woman there is a mage, ye said. An' we reckon, th' Chantry might be lookin' t' pay a bounty on a 'postate runnin' loose, right? Or maybe there's a rich man somewhere—a collector, as it were—what'd pay handsomely t' get betwixt the thighs o' such a rarity. After we has our fun wit' 'er, o' course. So what d'ye say, yer lordship? 'And 'er over, an' all these buttons is yours."

Backing away from all of them, Solona began summoning her power, knowing that once she did so, she would have to flee Antiva. The Chantry would be after her within a day, once it was known there was a mage wandering about free. She didn't think the claim of being a Grey Warden would win her much, this far from home.

Alistair was staring at her, his brow furrowed. His eyes darted sideways to that pouch of madcap buttons being waved so tauntingly before him. He licked his lips, sweat pouring down his forehead.

Without warning, he managed a surge of holy energy in Solona's direction. Not enough to throw her off her feet and drain her mana, but it still managed to stagger her and deplete a small amount of her power.

"Take her!" he sobbed, grabbing for the pouch.

Desperately, Solona flung her hand out and conjured a pool of grease at the feet of the rushing sailors. They were brawlers; strong and vicious, but clumsy and unskilled. They went down in an awkward heap, slipping on the viscous fluid.

Her mouth contorted in a feral snarl and she cast flames into the grease. All along the alley, windows opened and heads emerged as the screaming began, the sailors beating ineffectually at their burning clothing as they tried to escape the pool of flames. She heard people shouting in Antivan, no doubt saying that there was a mage in the alley, murdering people.

Ignoring them, she sent a chain of lightning through the four of them. It passed from one man to another, causing seizures and convulsions that prevented them escaping the burning grease. One by one, they fell dead into the flames.

In the glow of the fire, Solona looked at Alistair, who was looking back and forth between the dead sailors and Solona in shock, clutching his leather pouch.

"I am _finished_ with you!" she screamed at him, swinging at him and knocking the pouch from his hands, sending it flying into the guttering flames. Alistair cried out in alarm and dropped to his knees, trying to retrieve it and burning himself in the process.

"Kill yourself, for all I care," she spat in contempt, towering over him where he knelt on the dirty cobbles of the alley. "Poison yourself. Whore yourself out. Eat a hole through your gut with spirits. I don't care. I am _done_, Alistair!"

He stared at her with wild-eyed despair, as Solona turned and fled into the night. She stopped only long enough to set fire to a ship at the docks, the one with its hold crammed full of madcap. Then she left, determined never to look back.

It was a promise she would be unable to keep to herself.


	7. Part 7: Quietus

_**CONTENT WARNING:**_

_This fic is **DARKFIC.** It explores the characters as they might behave when they are taken to a VERY DARK PLACE. Namely, it explores who Alistair might become married to Anora with Loghain redeemed, and how that would affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances._

_It depicts acts of __ alcoholism, substance abuse, __RAPE, coerced sex, prostitution, and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Content may be triggering and/or offensive to your sensibilities. If any or all of these themes disturbs you, please hit the back button on your browser now._Solona wanted not to care.

* * *

She'd been able to deceive herself into believing she forgave Alistair for raping her, all those years ago, and for blackmailing her into giving up her life. It had been surprisingly easy to do so, because she _knew_ the man who had done it was not Alistair. She knew it, with every fiber of her being. The man who had done it was spiteful and cruel, and Alistair was neither of those things. It had been easy to separate them in her mind.

One time during her years in Denerim, in a drunken fit of remorse and self-pity, Alistair had cried something about having become an abomination. She had known he was right. And so, as she had done with Connor, rather than despise and slay him, instead she sought a way to free him from his demon's grasp.

So many hurts. So many betrayals. And it had all been for nothing. She'd been deceiving herself, secure in her conceit that the demons she had slain and outwitted in the past qualified her to free Alistair. But she couldn't free him. She _could not_ free him. The demon had taken over, and there was nothing of Alistair left.

Alistair was dead; she knew that. He'd been dead for years.

Why, then, did she want to look for him? Why couldn't she let him go and accept that?

After Alistair tried to sell her, she had fled Antiva. She made her way to southern Rivain, far away from the northern territories where there were so many followers of the Qun, whose treatment of mages made the Chantry's templars looking like doting mothers in comparison. Once a safe distance from Rialto, she stopped and purchased a few simple kirtles, using a small portion of the coin she had procured from the moneylender in Rialto, so that she could keep herself clean and well-groomed. It would not do, after all, to attract undue notice with a wild appearance. Then she arranged to travel with a merchant caravan to Rivain.

To anyone who inquired, she claimed to be the widow of a craftsman. In the wake of her husband's untimely passing, she said, she took the money they had saved together in the hopes of one day buying a modest farm, and was using it instead to travel someplace where a more temperate climate might alleviate her aches and illnesses. The Rivaini merchant leading the caravan was a peaceful, gentle man traveling with his wife and children. When she told him she was still in mourning and didn't wish to be disturbed, he saw to it that she was left alone.

In Rivain, she settled in a tiny farmhouse with a large kitchen garden, on the outskirts of a small village, not far south of Dairsmuid. Despite her general disinterest in people, Solona forced herself not to become reclusive. She feared a tendency toward isolation would draw more attention to her than would a modest presence within the community.

She used her knowledge of herbalism to raise sufficient vegetables to feed herself. Though the Rivaini were not followers of the Andrastian Chantry, she nonetheless carefully avoided letting on that she was a mage. However, she did grow herbs for potions, and bartered them for livestock and slaughtering services, for she had no skill with animal husbandry nor with the preparation and preservation of meat.

It was a quiet time, a time she spent in deep contemplation. She remembered Leliana's discussion of her stay in the Chantry cloister, and imagined it was rather like that. As she tended her garden, she considered all that had happened in the aftermath of the Blight. She came to a difficult, hard-won peace with the decisions she had made which contributed to Alistair's decline. With her distance from Alistair, it was as though a shroud was lifted from her, taking the guilt she had borne with it. She was not at fault, though in her darkest hours, self-doubt still plagued her. Day by slow, thoughtful day, she separated her own understanding of what had occurred from the blame Alistair had been wont to heap upon her.

It was not her fault. He had chosen his own course. It was not her fault, for sparing Loghain and marrying him to Anora; she had chosen as best she could with the knowledge she'd had at the time. It was not Anora's fault, for denying Alistair the kindness and approval he so desperately yearned for. All those things had been factors in what had made him desperate, yes, and yet ultimately it had been Alistair who had chosen his course.

He could have stopped raging for an hour and listened to Solona, when she tried to explain why she had chosen as she had that day in the Landsmeet. When Anora had denied him any warmth, he could have sought it elsewhere, even from Solona herself, for she would have given it gladly. When Anora had denied him a say in ruling the country, he could have put himself forward and made her heed him, rather than retreating. He could have even made himself into a competent ruler, sought allies within the Landsmeet, had the marriage annulled, and taken a new queen, had he chosen to do so. Instead, he had chosen to hate and blame Solona, and to sulk at Anora's rejection. He had chosen to wallow in what had happened, rather than rise above it and make the best of it. Solona had not chosen that for him.

It was not her fault.

It took years, and many, many thousands of tears, to reconcile herself with those facts. It took a daily effort not to sink back into the pattern of accepting blame for all that had gone wrong in Alistair's life. It took even more effort not to hate him. Oh, she wanted to, and some days she failed to overcome the urge. But she couldn't. If she let herself hate him, she became no better than he had become. If she let that demon inside, she might become an abomination herself.

Instead, she strove to come to peace with what he had done without excusing him. She strove to make herself understand that nothing he had done negated the good, kind man she had once loved. She strove to find a balance between despising his actions but still loving the man he had once been.

She strove to let him go, and accept that the Alistair she had loved was never coming back.

And yet she was haunted. She awoke in the middle of the night weeping, haunted by thoughts of his suffering and death, alone on the streets of Rialto. She imagined his degradation as he made a whore of himself for a few coppers with which to buy spirits or madcap buttons. She imagined him dying in a pool of his own blood, slain by criminals when he could not pay to feed his vices, or by the city guard when he turned to crime to earn the coin he needed. She imagined him sick and dying, ranting and convulsing when he could not buy spirits and the purging process began again, this time without the aid of a healer.

As her third year in Rivain drew to a close, she began to feel a restless urge to go back. She struggled with it for another two years before she finally gave in. She couldn't save Alistair; she knew that. In all probability, he was already dead. But she could not prevent herself from wondering...

_Let him go, and move on with your life,_ Captain Joachim had told her.

If only it were so easy. She could stop blaming herself. She could stop accepting his warped, vindictive version of events as truth.

But she could not stop caring.

He was a part of her, and had been since the moment she realized that she, Solona Amell, the gangly, awkward, homely, bookworm mage, had found someone who loved her. Despite her anger at him, despite her loathing for what he had done, that would always be true.

She needed to know what had become of him, one way or the other. At the very least, perhaps she could send report of his death to Weisshaupt, so that it could be recorded in the Grey Wardens' records that one of the three Wardens who had defeated the Fifth Blight had died.

Loghain might get credit for slaying the archdemon, but she could make certain Alistair's participation and fate did not go unremarked. That was just. She could see to it the annals of history remembered the valiant junior Warden who had refused to give up when no one else—including herself—had really understood or cared about the Blight.

She had to know.

And so she began making preparations for one of the villagers to let her tiny farm, so that she might return to Antiva. She didn't think the templars were still hunting her, after five years. And even if they were, they would not have her phylactery for they did not know who she was or where she hailed from.

Unless, of course, they had found Alistair and gotten the information from him. When that thought occurred to her, she almost dismissed the entire plan. When she thought about the way he had betrayed her, the way he had almost sold her, she couldn't care less if another Blight suddenly erupted from the ground right at his feet and claimed him. But then she remembered how poisonous Alistair's hatred and vengeance had become to him. It had become a plague, like Zathrian's curse upon the werewolves. She would not let it do the same to her, and so made herself let go of such thoughts.

In the end, however, she did not need to go seeking word of Alistair. Word came to her.

It came in the form of a courier journeying south from Dairsmuid bearing a missive which had been carried on an Antivan ship across the Rialto Bay.

_My Dear Warden,_

I find myself in possession of something which may have value to you. A Crow ship will be awaiting you in Dairsmuid, where you may learn more. I most urgently encourage you to make haste.

Your loyal friend,

Zev

Alistair.

It had to be. Zevran had some word of Alistair's fate. Perhaps one of his personal effects, found after his death, something he knew would be important to her. His Warden amulet? That silver, engraved ring Alistair wore and stroked with this thumb when he was fretting, until the etchings were all but buffed away. Something.

How Zevran had known where to find Solona, or that she might be seeking information about Alistair, she couldn't begin to guess. Nor could she imagine why haste would be necessary, or why Zevran hadn't sent the item with the courier.

It belatedly occurred to her—after she had thrown some clothing willy-nilly into a canvas sack and rushed out the door with the courier as her escort—that perhaps this was a trap. Perhaps the templars had learned her identity and tracked her down after all, but could not hunt her in Rivain, where there was no Chantry to support them. They might be luring her to the ship where templars waited to abduct her back to Antiva.

But the cryptic tone of the missive was exactly the sort of thing she imagined Zevran might send. Besides, the courier treated her with a level of deference that reminded her of Cesar, Master Ignacio's assistant. Not the sort of conduct she envisioned from an operative of the Chantry.

The courier had been equipped well for his task; he brought with him a horse for her to ride, making it only a two day journey to Dairsmuid. There he escorted her to a ship flying the Antivan flag and beneath it flapped a banner with the Crow emblem. The captain greeted her with a brand of courtesy normally reserved for exalted personages and escorted her belowdecks forthwith. The differences between this ship and the merchant vessel she and Alistair had taken passage aboard were abundantly obvious at a glance. The cabin doors were made from expensive wood and elegantly paneled. It was a ship built for luxury, meant for transporting important people, rather than cargo.

The captain rapped upon a door and it opened to reveal a familiar face.

"Zevran!" Solona gasped. She hadn't imagined he would come himself.

"Come in, Warden. We have much to discuss," he replied seriously, giving a courteous bow and allowing her inside. "Thank you, Captain Roderigo. You may go."

"_De nada, Patrón,_" the captain replied deferentially, and departed.

The cabin she entered was easily twice the size Captain Joachim's cabin had been, and that was just the sitting room. Two more doors led off it, indicating a full suite of rooms. The furnishings and appointments were comfortable and lavish.

"My dear Warden, how do you like my ship?"

"_Your_ ship?"

He shrugged. "Well, one of them. Every Crow cell that contracts for jobs in distant lands has at least one or two, you understand."

"So you... have your own cell now?"

Zevran gave a single slow incline of his head, an abbreviated nod. "I've become an important man in many ways, in the years since we have seen one another. I have you to thank for that, of course. You did not allow me a chance to tell you, last time we spoke."

"I'm pleased to see you've done so well, then," Solona replied with distracted courtesy. "How did you find me?"

Again he shrugged in a way that said everything and nothing. "I made it my business to know where you were years ago, in case you should have need of me. You left a rather amusing amount of destruction behind when you fled Rialto. Were you aware that a number of other ships burned the night you set fire to the one that had carried you from Ferelden? No? There was also considerable damage to the houses lining the alley where you were seen 'murdering' several men."

"I see," Solona said, blowing out a calming breath. Her heart began to race the instant she allowed herself to think of that night, and what had happened. She felt no remorse for killing the sailors, but burning Captain Joachim's ship had been a spiteful, petty thing to do. He had been decent and honest with her, yet she had destroyed his livelihood, possibly even killed him. And all because she wanted to punish him for telling her truths she didn't want to hear.

How had she not realized, at the time, how close she had been to becoming a monster herself?

"Zevran? Why am I here?"

"As I've said, my dear," he said, seating himself on a velvet-upholstered settee and gesturing her to a chair with a goblet of wine waiting beside it. "I make it my business to know things. For instance, I made it my business to know why you felt compelled to send me away so urgently when I attempted to call upon you, all those years ago in Denerim. For you see, among the many things you did not allow me to tell you at that time, was the fact that a contract was being offered upon your life, as well as the king's. I made it my business to know who, and why."

"Anora?"

Again, that single incline of his head. "Just so. I offered her a better deal, in exchange for your lives. But once my end of the contract was fulfilled and I had returned to Antiva, word reached me that she was again shopping for assassins." Zevran tutted playfully, but something in his eyes went cold and hard. "Those who betray Master Zevran Arainai do not live to profit from it. And so you'll find these days in Ferelden, the former Teyrn of Highever is now serving as regent for the young king, who was—quite unfortunately—orphaned as an infant."

Solona drew a deep breath. "While that's... extremely enlightening, Zevran, it doesn't answer my question."

"No, you're right. It does not." He offered her an impish smile, as though he hadn't just implicitly admitted to arranging the assassination of the Queen of Ferelden. "I simply like to boast, sometimes."

Despite herself, Solona laughed. Zevran had always been able to do that. His casual disregard for most of humanity meshed quite well with her own misanthropic tendencies.

Then Zevran sobered. "You left behind some baggage when you fled Rialto. I have it, if you wish to claim it. But, knowing what I have made it my business to know, I am not entirely certain you will want it."

It took Solona a moment to understand exactly what he was saying, and when she did, her goblet of wine fell from numbed fingertips to spread a burgundy stain across the thick, hand-woven rug on the wooden deck. Never in her life had she fainted, but she was nearly certain she would do so now.

"Alistair... is alive?"

She couldn't breathe, couldn't think! Her heart was pounding so hard she felt sure it would fail and kill her. She shot to her feet and began pacing frantically about the elegant sitting room.

_"He's not dead?"_

Zevran looked taken aback. "I... I am sorry, my dear Warden. This has distressed you, and that was not my intention. Perhaps you would prefer my courier escort you back to your home? My ship will leave, and you will never hear any more on the matter."

Solona gave a desperate, hysterical laugh. "It's far too late for that!" she cried, digging her hands into the hair at her temples.

"Then I will kill him for you, and you may put the matter behind you. I only brought him because he begged the favor and I would rather have given you the opportunity to decide for yourself whether to see him or not. There is no reason you must. He admits he has wronged you greatly."

"He is... no longer a drunkard? Nor using madcap buttons?"

"No, he is not." Zevran answered solemnly. "I gather he ran out of funds before he could finish the job of drinking himself to death. I did not know about the madcap, but it explains a great deal. His memory is poor and filled with holes. He believes much of what he does remember to be a nightmare. In many ways, he is not the man we knew during the Blight. His wits are slow, for they were no doubt damaged by the madcap toxins."

"What does he recall?"

"He recalls hurting you, badly, time and again. He says he betrayed you, but his wits are too scattered; he cannot explain what he means, only that he fears it was not a nightmare after all. He says he wishes to apologize, and make what amends he can. But you are under no obligation to indulge him. You may go back to your life, if you do not wish to see him. I wanted to offer you the choice, nothing more."

"Do I wish to see him?" Her voice still held that half-mad note of hysteria. "Maker, how can I possibly answer that? I had resigned myself to his death. I was preparing to go in search of information about his fate, perhaps hoping to find some of his effects. I never... I..." Her voice broke, catching on a breathless sob. She ripped her hands away from her hair, pulling at it madly. "I... I... _never_... Oh, _Maker!_"

She sank to her knees with a cry that was half-shriek, sobbing brokenly upon the rug. Even if she could have found the breath, she could not speak the truth, that she had felt _safe_ imagining Alistair dead.

It had been a relief to do so.

That, she understood at last, was why she had resolved to seek out word of his fate. She wanted to cement the sense of peace and security she had found, believing him to be dead. She wanted to know that never again would she be sucked down into the morass of his destructive spite, into his endless, unquenchable need for pity and consolation and nurturing. Knowing him to be dead, she could remember the man he had been and let go of the man he had become.

With the knowledge of his death, she would at last know she was free of it all. And, Maker help her, she had felt relieved at the prospect of it.

Horrific as it sounded, she was _disappointed_ to learn he was alive.

She didn't remember Zevran crossing the cabin to pull her up and guide her gently to the settee, where she curled up and rested her head on his lap, crying out her anguish.

"Maker help me," she whimpered as Zevran stroked her hair, her tears wetting the fine black leather of his breeches. "Maker help me, please!"

When her tears had spent themselves, she lay there hiccoughing and shivering as though with a great chill.

"My dear Warden," Zevran murmured soothingly, with a tenderness she had never imagined him capable of. "You are the only friend I claim in this world, and it pains me more than I can say to know I have brought this grief to your doorstep. Go. Be free of this. I am sorry. Forget we ever came."

"I can't now," Solona replied with a great shudder, pushing herself up and wiping at her face. "Now that I know, I will never be free until I have seen him, for imagining what he might be doing out there, alive, is far worse than the reality of seeing him again."

"I will be here to protect you," Zevran swore. "I will not let him harm you again."

"You cannot shield me from the pain he can inflict," she said with a sad smile. How could she explain to him that, while Alistair's compulsion was self-pity and oblivion, her own compulsion was taking care of him and picking up the pieces when he tried to destroy himself?

"I only can only pray that over the years, I've found the strength not to succumb to his never-ending _need_ again," she finished at last.

Zevran went very still and Solona felt a pulse of alarm. He turned a sober gaze to her and said, "His need will indeed end, soon enough. He is dying." 

* * *

The adjoining bedchamber to which Zevran led her was dark, for night had fallen outside the single porthole by the time she went inside. Zevran would not hear of her going until she had rested from her journey and a decent meal to fortify her courage.

It was quiet within, lit only by a single candle. Alistair lay upon a bed that was narrow, but nonetheless far more spacious and comfortable than the hammocks they had slept in aboard Captain Joachim's ship. As she watched, frozen with indecision, Alistair began to cough; a deep, hacking, shredding sound rising from his chest.

A wasting sickness, deep in the lungs, Zevran had called it. Solona had seen such things, in the Tower and in Amaranthine. She knew immediately that he was right.

"Where did you find him?" she asked, still afraid to approach the bed as the coughing fit subsided and Alistair moaned, barely conscious. He looked very wasted, indeed. His once-beautiful body was rail-thin, his muscles atrophied, his skin pallid and sickly.

"That I will not tell you," Zevran answered firmly. "For all your insatiable appetite for learning, that is knowledge you do not want in your head."

Steeling herself, she approached the bed and summoned healing energy to her hand. She laid it upon his chest and sent a pulse of her power deep within him. There, she could feel it, the disease eating away at his lungs. His stomach and liver were badly damaged as well, and... Oh, Maker, a pox, spreading throughout his blood and ravaging what was left. Where had he come by it, she wondered. For it to be so advanced, he had no doubt contracted it shortly after they had parted ways, if not before.

"I can't heal this," she murmured, feeling Zevran's expectant gaze upon her. "Wounds I can heal, for it is simply a matter of repairing damaged tissue. But I cannot cleanse a body of disease, at least not to this extent. The most I can do is repair some of its worst ravages to the vital organs and extend his life. Maker, how has he survived this long?"

"Heh. Grey Warden, remember?" Alistair's voice, raspy and clogged, startled her and Solona jerked away as though burned. Another fit of coughing seized him, and he began to choke. Zevran came forward with a basin, and Alistair coughed blood into it. When it was over, he rolled onto his back, gasping for breath. "Heightened... stamina... and endurance."

Solona gave a breathless, humorless chuckle, and Alistair grinned feebly at his own joke. His teeth were disturbingly yellow against his pale skin, and his gums swollen and diseased.

"Solona... is this... is this the Calling?" he asked, looking at her with an expression of confused trust. "I have... such horrible nightmares. But they're not of darkspawn. I don't..."

She felt tears burn her eyelids. It was Alistair, after all, whom she was speaking with. He was here. Not the Alistair she had loved long ago, no, but neither was he the monster he had become. She felt her loathing and dread begin to dissipate.

"Did I... did I hurt you?" he asked plaintively. "I remember... I think I did. I'm sorry, my love. So... very sorry."

The tears spilled down her cheeks. She wanted to tell him it was all right and offer him comfort and solace. She wanted to tell him he was forgiven. But she couldn't. Despite the peace she had reached during her years in Rivain, she now understood that forgiveness still eluded her. She could not speak that lie.

He closed his eyes for several moments, his labored breathing growing a bit easier. Then they fluttered open again, and he blinked at her in bewilderment.

"Is this the Calling?" he asked again. "Are we going to the Deep Roads, Solona? Can... can we be Grey Wardens again?"

Swallowing against a sob, she nodded wordlessly, and turned to look at Zevran over her shoulder.

"Zevran, can your ship take us to Amaranthine?" 

* * *

She used her healing to undo some of the damage to Alistair's vital organs in order to strengthen him for the journey. Indeed, it was possible with such healing that he might have months, or even a few years left. His wits improved slightly once she had done so. He was still often vacant and confused, but better than he had been.

It was a new Alistair she found herself confronted with. Not the kind and soft-hearted templar, nor the cruel and embittered king, nor the needy, self-pitying sot, nor the broken wreck who had tried to sell her to some sailors for a handful of madcap buttons. A new Alistair, yes, but of all of them, the closest to the original.

He was not an Alistair she could despise or treat vindictively. He asked for very little, and so her fears of being caught up in catering to his needs came to naught. Mostly, he wished to be left alone to contemplate what he had done and sort out what was reality and what was delusion in his jumbled, damaged memories.

After a week at sea, sailing south through the Rialto Bay to the Amaranthine Ocean, he was strong enough to make his way onto the deck. Solona was up there, enjoying the wind, when Alistair approached Zevran.

"Do you have a sword I could use?" he asked politely. "I... don't know what happened to mine. I need to train."

Impassively, Zevran nodded and escorted Alistair belowdecks to peruse the weapons kept on-board the ship. Solona became concerned when they were gone so long, and went in search of them.

She found them in the small cabin that served as an armory, Alistair trying to heft various swords and finding his muscles too weak to support them for long.

"We will train," Zevran said encouragingly. "And you will get some strength back, before you go into the Deep Roads."

"I wish I could remember how I got to this state," Alistair muttered, a bit peevishly. "I'm weak as a kitten."

"It is a long, complicated story, my friend," Zevran replied, "and probably best left untold."

Alistair tried to lift a sword again and a moment later his arm trembled with the effort of wielding it. "I wonder what sort of reception we'll get in Ferelden. I imagine Anora is rather angry at me."

"Ah, not exactly," Zevran chuckled. "I am sorry to inform you that your queen died several years ago, after giving birth to your heir, the new king."

The sword was lowered with an abrupt clatter. "I have a son?"

Zevran cleared his throat. "Not exactly, no. It's... possible... your queen may have employed the services of a, ahem, surrogate, when you proved unwilling to service her. Specifically, an elf with something roughly approaching your hair and eye coloration, whose price was that she not contract your assassination or... that of anyone you were particularly close to."

Alistair stared at Zevran, for once not looking the slightest bit confused. "Oh, really?"

"Hm," Zevran nodded with a small smile. "And I must say, I have waited many years to tell you, my friend, that you were wrong when you said your wife's slit was ice-cold."

Alistair hesitated a moment, apparently trying to decide whether he should be offended or not, then gave an unconcerned shrug. "Is that a fact?"

"Indeed," Zevran replied emphatically. "Ice, it turns out, is much warmer."

Alistair gawked at him for a moment, then gave a barking laugh that quickly dissolved into a fit of coughing. When he had recovered, wiping his eyes, Zevran was grinning gloatingly. "Ah, I knew someday before the end, I would get the templar to loosen up and laugh at one of my dirty jokes!"

Solona walked away with their joint chuckles in her ears.

She went to Zevran that night, after she had sent Alistair to bed with a potion to ease his breathing and help him sleep. And though they had only ever been friends, Zevran welcomed her. He allowed her the comfort of another human being to touch, allowed her to thank him without words for his kindness. He treated her with gentle affection and lavished her with praise despite her protests that he need not flatter her.

"Ah, you do not see what age has done for you, my sweet Warden," he murmured, embracing her bare body from behind, catching her breasts in his hands as his lips brushed the back of her neck. "Unkind years crush pretty but fragile flowers and leave them looking haggard and worn. But your grace and gentle strength have blossomed as the years have passed, like the dull blade that begins to glitter and shine when sharpened, yes?"

And then he pleasured her until she was swept up in rapture, until the beauty of his lovemaking made her feel glowing and radiant, as though she were indeed as beautiful as his extravagant praise made her out to be.

In the morning, Solona found Zevran training with Alistair. He made no mention of their night together, nor did he reproach her for not seeking him out again. Without words, they went back to the way they were, and Solona felt her burdens ease to know he would make no demands upon her.

That voyage was the happiest time of her life, unrivaled by anything that had passed in the sixteen years since the Blight had ended.

She became aware that she was avoiding Alistair, limiting herself to what contact was needed to act as his healer and nothing more. She feared herself, that her need to comfort and coddle him would take over again. They fed off each other, she realized, watching the waves from the side-rail of the ship. His need fed into her tendency to nurture, which in turn made him more needy. Perhaps she had made a mistake, all those years ago, by not fleeing from him in Denerim. Perhaps if she had left him to his own devices sooner, he might have found a way to drag himself out of the bog of self-pity. Perhaps her endless accommodation of his needs had kept him mired down as much as his needs had kept her mired down.

"Solona?"

She whirled, her heart suddenly racing as though she were fearful of being attacked. She gripped the rail hard, putting her back to it, her entire body tense and poised to defend.

He was wearing light leather armor, and a short sword was sheathed at his hip. Though he had come far in recovering his strength, it was impossible that he could wear heavier armor or bear a larger blade, much less a shield to go with it.

"You can't possibly go into the Deep Roads armed like that," she blurted without thinking. She heard that mother-hen tone in her voice and cursed herself for it. She was right to avoid him. It was so easy to fall back into that familiar routine.

But Alistair only grinned and shrugged. "Why not? It's not like I'm going there with the hope of coming back out alive. I could go into the Deep Roads in my smallclothes armed with nothing more than a table dagger for all the difference it would make."

Solona stared at him in astonishment for a long moment, for that grin, that jaunty, self-deprecating humor, were so very much like the Alistair he had once been, it was like going back in time to the days of the Blight. Then she began to laugh, and he joined her, leaning against the side-rail to look out over the ocean.

After a moment he grew serious again. "Zevran says we'll be in Ferelden in another week or so."

She nodded, grateful for the neutral topic. "Yes. He told me the same."

"Why are we not making port in Highever? Isn't that closer to Orzammar?"

"Well, yes, but we needn't travel to Orzammar to get to the Deep Roads. There's an entrance to them right underneath Vigil's Keep, or there's Kal'Hirol not far from Amaranthine. Unless... Oh, Maker. Of course!" She scolded herself for her stupidity. "If we don't go to Orzammar, your going into the Deep Roads won't be recorded by the Shaper of Memories. You were so ill when I decided to go to Amaranthine, I didn't think you could make the journey overland to Orzammar and so I only thought of the most direct route to the Deep Roads. But, we could try, I suppose..."

"No." Alistair shook his head.

"But it's Grey Warden tradition!"

"Solona. No. I don't want to be recorded in the Memories." He turned to face her with a tense, bitter smile. "I haven't been a Grey Warden for many years now. And... this isn't the Calling."

Unable to deny the truth of his words, Solona bowed her head and said nothing.

"Thank you," Alistair said after a moment, "for having the kindness to let me believe it was, when I was so ill and confused. That was more than I deserved."

"Your memory is doing better, then?" she asked after a moment.

"Much as I sometimes wish otherwise." His tone was bitter. "Most of what happened after we left Denerim is a blur. All I can remember are fragments, and while I wish I could convince myself they were nightmares, I'm very afraid they weren't. I wish I knew for certain."

"No," Solona replied evenly, "you don't."

"I do. I need to know. I can't... The Chantry says we need to repent our sins, before the end, and I can't do that without knowing what I'm repenting for."

It was a hateful, vile thing which welled up within her, a cruel need to fling all that he had done back in his face, knowing he was finally, _finally_ capable of feeling true remorse for it. If she were a kinder, more compassionate person, she would never have done it.

_"You want to know?"_ she asked venomously. "Then, by the Maker, I'll tell you!"

And she did. She knew he already remembered raping her, and most of what had happened in Denerim. But she told him anyway. She told him of her shame and fear, and how despicable she found it that he had turned all the pleasures they had once celebrated together in love into a weapon against her, taking away her joy in being a woman bit by bit at a time.

And then she told him of what had happened upon Captain Joachim's ship. She told him how he had become a whore, letting the sailors use and degrade him. He listened without protesting, without interrupting. Tears poured down his face, as she described in detail what she had witnessed, how the sailor had mocked him when he urinated in Alistair's mouth and then used him.

Then she told him how he had betrayed her, tried to sell her, and Alistair's shoulders began to shake in silent sobs.

She stood there, glaring at his back, as he looked back out over the ocean and wept. The anger that was thrumming through her body was so intense she felt nearly ill with it, and yet it felt good, _so very good_ to flay him with the truth of his transgressions. She hated herself for taking such pleasure in it.

At last, Alistair wiped his face with the back of his hand, though his voice was rough and clogged when he spoke over his shoulder.

"Thank you. For telling me. I didn't want to ask. I don't have the right to ask anything of you. That's not self-pity, by the way. It's just... truth."

There was nothing she could say to that, and so she said nothing.

"That's why I'm not going to ask you to forgive me. In fact, I beg you not to. I don't deserve it. I don't want it. You are entitled to every bit of hatred you feel for me. I wish... I wish I had never asked Zevran to bring me to you. I should have left you in peace. It was selfish of me, and I'm sorry."

"I don't know if I'll ever have peace, Alistair," Solona said softly, only now realizing her own face was wet. "I thought I had found it, but I think I was deceiving myself. If I can still feel so much anger about it all, then whatever peace I thought I found was just an illusion."

"There are no words I can use to apologize, nothing that can do it all justice." He didn't look at her as he spoke, but stared bleakly out at the endless waves. "It's good that I'm dying, I think. Though it would probably be more just if I had to live with myself, knowing what you've told me. If you don't want to escort me to the Deep Roads, I'll understand."

"No. I'll go," she answered after a moment of weighing the decision. "I'll see this through to the end. For my own sake."

Nothing more needed to be said, and so she left him there and returned to her cabin. 

* * *

When they made port in Amaranthine, they delayed aboard the ship nearly three days while Solona sent a letter to Arl Nathaniel and allowed him time to comply with her request that he lock every drop of spirits at Vigil's Keep away in the wine cellar. Oghren, she instructed firmly, was to be sober as a judge by the time they arrived.

It was a good thing she did so. As the comfortable carriage Nathaniel sent for them wound its way through the streets of Amaranthine, she saw Alistair's hands clench in his lap, and his tongue dart out to lick his lips, as they passed the Crown and Lion. Even now, he felt the compulsion, though he made no effort to find an excuse to stop the carriage or gave any other indication of distress.

By her request, there was no ceremony to greet their arrival at the Vigil. No one would have recognized Alistair in his condition and it was best to keep it that way. Let Ferelden believe he had died, or whatever Anora had told them. Let him disappear quietly into the Deep Roads.

She surprised herself by laying awake that single, final night they spent at the Vigil weeping as though her heart were breaking. As much as she had once been relieved to imagine Alistair was dead, now the thought of watching him die _hurt_. It filled her with unutterable sadness.

Oghren decided to accompany them into the Deep Roads as well, and Zevran insisted upon it. Again, past and present collided to leave her bizarrely disoriented, for the four who went into the Deep Roads were among those who had fought the Blight together. It was... fitting... she decided, and made no mention of it. But from the look of gratitude in Alistair's eyes, he realized it as well.

It took some time to find darkspawn, for the Grey Wardens at Vigil's Keep kept the passages beneath Amaranthine well-cleared. They had to follow the Deep Roads for what she estimated to be several weeks, most of the way to Orzammar, in fact. The travel began to tell on Alistair's health, but he refused to allow Solona to heal him when he began coughing blood again.

Finally, they found darkspawn. It was a small band; nothing they couldn't have easily defeated had they all been in fighting form. Alistair gave a feral grin and charged them as Oghren roared a battle cry and Zevran slipped silently into the shadows.

By the time the fight was over, Alistair lay on the stone floor, a darkspawn sword through his gut. He had managed to kill one, before he fell. The second he engaged was the one which wounded him. He had simply been far too weak and insufficiently armed.

It was Oghren who caught her hands as Solona instinctively called healing energy to them.

"Ye're missin' the point, lass."

Something at once tight and hollow ached in her chest as she approached and knelt next to Zevran on the ground beside Alistair's head.

He writhed in pain, blinking rapidly. When he coughed, a torrent of blood came spewing out of his mouth.

"I lied," Alistair gasped, and it was nearly impossible to hear him. "Solona. I do want your forgiveness."

Tears streamed down her face, and she sobbed once. Then she bent low to kiss his brow. "You have it."

A smile came to his blood-flecked lips and lit his ravaged face as he died.

How long she knelt there, weeping, Solona didn't know. All she knew was in that moment when she said she forgave him, she meant it. And with that vow, she finally found peace and freedom.

At last, Zevran tugged gently upon her arm.

"Come, Warden. It is time to move on."

"Yes," she agreed, rising. "But... let's go to Orzammar, not back to Amaranthine. Let's make certain the passing of a Grey Warden is recorded in the Memories."

Zevran gave a single solemn nod as Oghren growled his approval. They left Alistair lying where he had fallen, and moved onward toward the future.

THE END


End file.
